


For Where We Are Is Hell

by tb_ll57



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Between Books, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He could just see the blurry outline of Remus’s shoulders against the dark night sky, the moonless sky. No werewolf with him here tonight, the black night, the night without even stars to relieve the darkness. Just Remus.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. James

**Author's Note:**

> A series of eight character introspectives centred on Remus Lupin. Written in 2005, and eventually diverging from canon, since Rowling hadn't yet published the full series. Originally hosted at Sychophant Hex.
> 
> This chapter is based on the fic 'Swimming Lessons' by Kimagure, who kindly granted permission for me to rewrite it and springboard a series from it.

His hearing had gone all hollow and rushing, as if he were in a tunnel. Remus sounded far, far away, a distant call, a flat sound with meaning trailing slowly.

‘Don’t lie to me, James.’

He had to force the air into his own lungs, gasping hard and big. ‘I’m not,’ he managed roughly, and felt pricks of pain at the back of his neck as Remus’s fingers tightened in his hair. A moment later water slammed against his face, the slap of it shocking, and the sudden flood in his open mouth and nose choking him.

It was only a few moments before Remus pulled his head back above the surface of the lake. ‘I’m not stupid, you know,’ the other boy said in his ear, his fist still locked in James’s collar, the other hand flat against his chest, supporting him almost gently. The rest of James’s body was numb. The lake water was freezing, and when Remus had first pushed him into it the weight of his crash had broken a thin crust of ice. He could no longer feel the pinch and press of Remus’s knees in his back. Just the hands, only a little warmer than the water, and the weight in his lungs, the bitter taste on his tongue that was fear and mud.

He should have obeyed his intuition. _Come for a walk, James,_ Remus had said, and there’d been something wrong with his face; but the Tower had been so hot, so stuffy, and Sirius and Peter were in detention and he’d been bored. _Come for a walk, just us._

It had been almost two months since the whole thing had happened. James just hadn’t seen it coming.

He found his voice, though it was hard to be coherent. ‘Wha– makes you think– ‘m lying?’

He should have known. There’d been something off in Remus’s face, the invitation had been too innocent.

The hand on his chest went away, and came down on James’s shoulder instead, gripping hard enough that he felt it. ‘You smell guilty,’ Remus whispered. He pushed, and James went under again, held down relentlessly. But again it was only a few moments, and James spat and dripped and shivered when Remus wrenched him up again. ‘I want the truth.’

‘Sirius sent Snape–‘

And then he was back under, blind, beginning to panic, beginning to pass out. Surely he was drowning. He didn’t want to swallow but water poured down his throat in a great rush of disturbed sand and slime. He could scream here and no-one would know, not even Remus. No-one would hear him. No-one would help him.

Fitting, that.

He was weaker than a kitten when Remus finally let him up. Blearily, his glasses long since lost, his frozen arms trailing limply, James stared into the night and couldn’t tell the difference. _I sent Snape,_ he confessed, and didn’t know if it came out aloud.

It must have. Remus held him up, kept him squashed into the muck with his chin just grazing the chilly lip of the lake. The silence, that roaring silence, went on forever while James struggled to breathe.

Then, Remus said, ‘I know. Sirius is a lot of things. Murderer may even be one of them. But he knows the price of acceptance.’

That was true. James knew how hard Sirius had worked to free himself of his family’s reputation. He knew how hard Sirius had fought to make a place in Gryffindor with all sides calling him a blood-traitor. James knew it firsthand, because Sirius had come to him, hadn’t he? Had shown up on James’s doorstep in Surrey with a trunk containing all his worldly possessions, and fresh tear-tracks on his cheeks, and helpless, desperate hope in his eyes.

When Remus let him go and stood, James went under again because he couldn’t hold himself up. He woke with bright spots dancing in his eyes and the roaring sound inside his head, and Remus swearing at him from a long way away as he was hauled out of the lake and into the weeds. He retched weakly, and Remus grimly pounded him on the back until he’d spit up everything in his stomach. James lay with his cheek cold in the grass, his body blunted and anaesthetised by the ordeal.

‘He follows you blindly,’ that unrelenting voice accused. It was like the voice of God. From out of the darkness.

‘I know,’ James croaked, blades of grass collecting between his lips. ‘He never... never even protested.’

Remus rolled him onto his back. ‘Why would he?’ he demanded brutally. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to see that he thinks he owes you.’ And, God, yes, there was something wrong in his voice now too– contempt– contempt breaking through the icy crust that Remus had been wearing since that innocuous invitation, the heartless attempt to kill him in the lake. And James almost sighed in relief to hear it, because it was the first time since Remus had stepped behind him and pushed that James thought he might live to see dawn.

‘I–‘ James started.

‘I’m not done yet,’ Remus cut him off. Something moved against his chest, and James realised it was Remus’s fingers, unbuttoning his blazer and shirt and freeing him from the soaked garments. ‘Sirius isn’t the one with the grudge,’ Remus went on, that boyish harsh voice floating down from above him. ‘None of us hate him like you do. We never understood it. But you’re our mate. We trusted you to have a good reason. Do you have a good reason, James?’

‘Remus,’ he whimpered. It sounded like defeat even to his own ears. He could just see the blurry outline of Remus’s shoulders against the dark night sky, the moonless sky. No werewolf with him here tonight, the black night, the night without even stars to relieve the darkness. Just Remus.

‘What Sirius does for you is his own business,’ Remus went on. He unbuckled James’s belt, and pulled hard, and James felt his jeans jerking roughly down his bare thighs. Finally relieved of his clothing, he began to shiver, and vaguely remembered that was a good thing. ‘I’ll corroborate his story because that’s what he seems to want. You and I, though, are going to come to an understanding.’ Remus ripped off one, then the other, of James’s trainers and tossed them away. Off came his socks. ‘Don’t mistake me. I think it’s disgusting how you used him. But it was his decision to go along with your farce. The problem I have is that you didn’t ask _me_ , James, and you didn’t ask Snape.’

The cold was creeping back over him. His teeth were chattering. Every brush of the night breeze was a torment. He struggled to wrap his arms about himself, to curl onto his side. The weight of his body was unbearable. His empty stomach cramped. He felt sick with knowledge.

‘James. Wake up.’ He tried– he did. But he couldn’t seem to move. He flinched when Remus grabbed him by the shoulder again, conditioned now to know that pain would follow, but Remus only pulled him upright with an arm under his, rubbing him on the back, not gentle, not hard. James crossed his eyes twice before he could see anything– the faint luminescence of Remus’s white white skin, bare like his now, and his yellow hair plastered back against his skull so that his face was all bones and angles and shadows, like an ancient human, all prominent brow and nose and jaw. Somewhere in there, James knew, were eyes, Remus’s amber eyes, but they were invisible like James’s glasses, disappeared somewhere.

‘I didn’t mean to use you,’ James said hoarsely. The broad palm on his back came to a stop, pressed lightly between his shoulder blades. ‘You have every right to be angry. To hate me.’

‘I know.’ Remus’s voice was as calm as ever. James had to fight down an hysterical giggle. Did nothing shake him? No. That wasn’t true. Because James remembered that look, that shattered look, on Remus’s pale face when he’d told him about Snape and the Shrieking Shack.

‘Why did you do it?’ Remus said, asking now, that hand supporting him on his back. ‘Why do you hate Snape so much?’

If there was an answer James didn’t know how to give it. It wasn't enough to say that it had been nothing. How could he explain how he had laughed aloud when he'd thought of it? That he'd thought only of the harm to himself. That he'd been fifteen and stupid and so sure of himself and his own righteousness. He was Gryffindor; he was a Potter, a wizard with an ancient Pureblood line of heroism and power and influence. Hogwarts was his kingdom and the Marauders were his knights. And now, half-drowned with his own betrayal, he thought he might kill himself before he admitted that it had been just one more thoughtless cruelty in a long queue of little crimes. He’d never even known himself for a monster before he’d had to face a raging werewolf that smelled human blood.

‘James?’

There were some things that a boy couldn’t share with his friends. There were some things so shameful that they had to stay secret if you intended to grow up and do better and be better.

‘I’ll make it up,’ he said instead. He felt the sobs threaten, and then they overwhelmed him in a torrent, as if he’d gotten so much of the lake in him it was going to start coming out wherever it could. Water spilled down his face in a flood. ‘I’ll make it up,’ he repeated mindlessly. ‘I’ll make it better. I swear, Remus. I swear I will.’

And then Remus sighed, and hugged him hard. ‘You will,’ he said in James’s ear, and there was steel in his voice, not reassurance– command, not understanding. ‘You will make it up for the rest of your life, James.’

And James took that, and wrapped his heart around it, and he _tried_.


	2. Sirius

‘I can’t punish you the same way I punished James,’ Remus murmured.

Sirius looked up from his parchment. Not fifteen feet from them Flitwick, the tiny little man who taught Charms, yawned into his morning coffee.

They were supposed to be studying privately. Sirius had chosen to work on his Transfiguration essay, due last week and never quite finished. Remus, he thought, had chosen to read ahead for Arithmancy.

Sirius cleared his throat and spoke at the same muted level his friend had chosen. ‘What did you do to him?’

Blank amber eyes met his for a moment; then Remus turned a page and resumed reading.

When Remus had finally pried the truth from Sirius last week, Sirius had known that Bad Things would follow. The worst of it was that Sirius knew Remus remained absolutely unconvinced of James’s innocence in the matter. All this fuss over Severus Snape, Sirius thought, glancing across the room to where the Slytherin sat, surrounded by a group of his Housemates and ostentatiously ignoring the Gryffindor half of the room. It wasn’t as if Snape had actually been hurt.

He waited until Flitwick opened the Society page of the _Daily Prophet_ , and then he said, ‘When did you punish James?’

Remus made a careful, tiny note in the margin of his text, and set his quill aside with precision. ‘You should know by now,’ he answered, ‘I don’t trust you with information these days.’

A little pinprick of guilt speared him. Snape happened to look up and see Sirius watching him; the hook-nosed boy made an obscene gesture, and it took a great deal of willpower to let it pass. But he did, knowing Remus had seen it too and was watching for his reaction.

‘You see, with James,’ Remus began saying, so low Sirius had to lean in to hear. ‘He’s overconfident. He never thinks he’ll be caught, and so he’s sloppy. But you.’ Remus closed his book, and reached for another, his Potions text. He opened it to his marker, a fraying red ribbon. ‘You,’ he finished, ‘you want to be caught. I think you want everyone to know how big and bad you are.’

Sirius flushed. ‘I suppose you know everything about us.’

He got no response, this time. Remus was absorbed in his text as if he’d never spoken at all. Sirius stared at him a while, bewildered by all the cryptic mutterings, knowing there had to be something else coming, another shoe to drop. Remus was like that, the kind of person who wanted all the facts before he would judge, the kind of person who always read mysteries through to the end so he could solve the case himself. Remus had waited two months, after all, before he’d locked himself in the Prefects’ bathroom with Sirius.

‘I’m going to give you the opportunity to stop lying to me,’ Remus had said with that frustrating directness he had. ‘Tell me who gave you the idea, Sirius.’

When a hand suddenly shot up in his peripheral vision, Sirius jumped. Remus sat with his hand politely in the air. It took nearly a minute for Flitwick to notice and acknowledge him.

‘May I be excused, Professor?’ Remus asked. ‘Myself and Black.’

It was a measure how liked and trusted Remus was even by the teachers that Flitwick never even asked for a reason. Instead their professor only stifled another yawn, and answered, ‘Certainly. Dismissed.’

‘You know, I was actually working. I thought you liked to encourage that,’ Sirius whispered, sweeping his notes together and capping his ink. Remus copied him, gathering his books and placing them in his bag with studied little movements. There were times, Sirius noticed, when Remus acted much like any Pureblood, for all he was two generations removed. Remus liked grace and he liked elegance; he liked everything to be proper, and he liked everything logical and fit. Sirius, raised amidst the typically Slytherin extreme of those qualities, disliked them all heartily. Remus had been so much more relaxed before he’d been made a Prefect and started making such a big deal out of things like responsibility as if that meant bugger-all.

Remus was ready before him, and waited with no sign of feeling on his face. Sirius swung his bag over his shoulder and moved into the aisle between desks, Remus a step behind him, just like always. He felt eyes on his back until they were safely out of the classroom and the tall oak doors had closed behind them. Then Remus strode briskly off the corridor, and Sirius stared hard at him, instead, jogging to keep up the pace.

‘Where we going? Moony?’

‘To Hagrid’s.’

‘But he’s not here. Dumbledore sent him to Romania, for that conference on dragon taming.’

‘He asked me to feed Fang, you know that.’

‘Now? Why didn’t you go before breakfast?’

‘Sirius,’ Remus said, never looking back at him, ‘stop asking questions.’

It was nearly mid-December and the weather was frigid. Sirius clutched his thick winter cloak tightly about his body, but the freezing wind cut him everywhere he was exposed and seeped quickly through his woollen layers. Remus was barging on ahead as if he didn’t feel the cold. Chilled to the bone in seconds, Sirius followed grimly. If Remus really had confronted James, then maybe it hadn’t been so awful after all, because James hadn’t said a thing about it. Though, now he thought on it, Sirius realised that James hadn’t said much of anything lately, and nothing at all to Remus. Sirius tried to maintain a show of indifference, but stale guilt and fresh nerves were working on him. Remus kept up that rangy-legged pace all the way to Hagrid’s gamekeeper hut, with Sirius lagging back. When they finally reached the shelter of the squat, solid building, they were both red-cheeked, and their breath steamed in the air in large plumes. Remus produced a giant-sized brass key from an inside pocket, and when he unlocked the door they were greeted by the sound of claws scrambling on wooden floors and a lusty bark. Sirius wisely stepped back just before Fang, a giant-sized puppy with hindquarters like a lion’s, sprang through the open door and into Remus’s arms.

He watched the werewolf wrestle the dog back inside the hut, not missing Remus’s fond pettings and feeling a little envious. Remus was sparing with touch even amongst his friends, and though Sirius had been capable of transforming himself into a dog at will for more than a year, Remus had never once taken advantage of Sirius’s playful attempts to draw him out. Perhaps if he’d been a real dog, like Fang. Perhaps if he hadn’t betrayed one friend because another told him to.

Once Fang had been fed– a rump steak the size of Sirius’s head and so raw it might have been freshly butchered– Remus lit the gas stove and put Hagrid’s over-sized kettle on the boil. Sirius dropped his bag onto an armchair and slumped back into its deep leather seat, wondering how this would play out. He watched Remus ready a tray as prettily as if he were a dame in a tea house, hotting a ceramic pot, placing tea leaves into an aluminium strainer, laying out biscuits in a dominoes overlap in a perfect circle. When he offered the plate to Sirius, Sirius carefully chose one that wouldn’t disrupt the design.

‘James,’ Remus said abruptly, ‘is a coward and a cheat.’ He watched almost clinically as Sirius choked on his floury biscuit and tried to come up with the air to protest. ‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ the other boy added disdainfully.

With a manful swallow, Sirius finally managed an almost-level rebuttal. ‘He’s not even here to defend himself,’ he said, low and not-quite belligerent.

‘Oh, James knows exactly how I feel,’ Remus retorted. ‘I know exactly how _you_ feel. And now you’re going to know exactly how _I_ feel.’ He was interrupted by the whistle of the kettle, and he turned his back to Sirius to pour the boiling water into the pot.

‘You acted normal!’ Sirius protested. ‘How we were supposed to know? You never said you were still angry!’

Remus set the pot down with more force than necessary, his mouth set in a grim, hard line. ‘I’m saying it now, Sirius.’

The one thing, the one thing, that he’d never been able to face from his friends was their disapproval. He courted it from the rest of the world; he would bully, charm, or weasel his way into trouble for the chance to show how little he cared for the good opinion of the world. But it was poison when it came from the Marauders, the best and only friends he’d ever had. Seeing it on Remus’s face just now was withering. His stomach cramped around the chalky mess of Hagrid’s stone-like biscuits.

‘I said I was sorry,’ he tried.

‘And I said I forgave you.’ For a moment, just a moment, Remus’s hard gaze softened. ‘That’s still true.’

Relief flooded through him. ‘Then what the hell are you on about?’

Remus left the kitchen with the tea tray, setting it on a small table between them and handing Sirius a very large mug of steaming tea. He took the wicker rocker opposite Sirius’s armchair, and perched so that his feet stayed on the floor, his own mug cradled between his bony knees.

‘I spoke to James in a way he could understand,’ Remus said. ‘Same as I’m doing now with you.’

Sirius took a gulp of his tea, wincing as it burnt his gums behind his front teeth. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘Forget James for now.’ They looked at each other, fighting a brief, silent war of wills; Remus won. ‘I am going to tell you a story,’ the young prefect said finally, his still gaze on Sirius’s face. ‘And then I’m going to ask you to end it.’ He carefully set his mug back on the tray, and leant back in the rocker. His long fingers looked small for a moment on the huge arms of the chair, like a child’s hand on adult furniture. There was nothing childlike in his expression. ‘This is the time for you to listen and obey.’

No-one, no-one, had ever used that word with him but his mother. Hearing it now was a deliberate slap, and Sirius took it like one, going stiff and hurt. But saw no compromise forthcoming. ‘Fine,’ he muttered.

Remus didn’t wait for further agreement. ‘You know that my father was MP for Berkshire for a while? In 1968 he voted for a measure that would have disenfranchised wizards and witches who were convicted of crimes against the wizarding community. He voted his conscience and he did it against a lot of pressure from powerful people. He did it even though he had received threats from people who were otherwise reasonable and civil. He thought it was the right thing to do and that he owed it to the people he represented. And he was proud of himself right up til the day Fenrir Greyback broke into our house at night and came into my bedroom. He didn’t attack my father. He went after me. I was seven years old.’

Sirius knew the story, or at least he’d known that Remus had been young when he’d been bit. Remus had never elaborated so much before.

‘For years after,’ Remus said, ‘I was afraid to sleep in the dark. I put all my toys in front of the door, and tins of marbles, barricades of building blocks. If he came back I wanted to hear him so I could try to escape. I hadn’t heard him that night, you see. I woke up when he put his hands over my mouth so I couldn’t scream.

‘He said he liked children. He said he liked seeing all the fear. And then he said that he’d have to thank my father for giving him such a wonderful opportunity because I was such a _sweet little thing_.’

Sirius found it difficult to swallow again. He broke their gaze, and looked into his tea instead.

After a moment Remus went on, his steady voice restored. ‘I was almost eleven when I got the invitation to come to Hogwarts. We hadn’t been sure there would be one, you see, because even though my father had tried to keep my condition a secret, the Ministry had to know. By then I was used to never talking about it. We never talked about anything. So I had no-one to go to with my secret fear that I would be just like Greyback. Only somehow Dumbledore knew. He came to our house to deliver the invitation himself. And he sat with me all alone, and he told me that I could be whoever, whatever I wanted to be, and there was nothing in the world that could stop me if what I wanted to be was a good person.’

He paused. Sirius, on an impulse he immediately regretted, looked up. How Remus could look so old and weary when he was only sixteen he would never really understand, but seeing it there in his friend’s face made him feel small and ashamed and stupid.

‘You tell me,’ Remus said gently, looking at him from those old old amber eyes. ‘You tell me, Sirius, whether I was a good person the night I almost killed Severus Snape.’

‘Oh,’ he said, suddenly aching. ‘Oh, Remus, I’m so sorry.’

‘I want you to say it, please.’

His eyes felt hot and scratchy just like his throat. He rubbed them furiously, accidentally sloshing his tea over his trousers. ‘Of course you’re a good person,’ he tried. ‘It was my fault. I’m the one who’s a wretch. It was me, my fault–‘

‘There was a moment,’ Remus said, his voice so detached and distant that it was like he wasn’t even speaking about himself, ‘when Dumbledore asked me if I had participated in it. If I had agreed to it. When he believed that I could be guilty. He doubted me. And here’s the thing, Sirius. I started to doubt myself. Because that was my first reaction too, that I was a good person and it wasn’t my fault. I blamed you and I blamed you at the top of my lungs. But then...’

‘No,’ Sirius denied flatly. ‘It was me, Remus. I’m so sorry. It was all me.’

‘Was it?’ Remus shrugged. ‘How many times did I stand aside while I watched you and James and Peter bully Snape? How many times did I let Lily take points from you when it ought to have been my responsibility? How many little pranks became big ones because I never made you stop? How many times did I think, they’re my friends and Snape’s not? How many times did I convince myself it was just normal in-House fighting and that you’d grow out of it? Until I woke up in the Infirmary with Snape in the bed next to mine. He cried that night, Sirius. He had a nightmare and he woke up crying, just like I used to. And I know he’ll be afraid of the dark for a long time. Because of me.’

He couldn’t think of anything even remotely adequate to say. He sat listening to Fang chewing the marrow out of the steak bones, to the wind in the rushes over their heads, to the tick of a clock somewhere out of sight. He sat looking at Remus, at his long white fingers on the wicker armrests, at the shadows on his thick cheekbones and thin mouth.

After the long silence Remus sighed very softly. ‘I think that’s enough,’ he said, sounding very tired now. ‘You and I, we’ll serve our punishments together.’

Yes, Sirius thought. We will. But neither of them left the hut. They sat sipping their cooling tea, watching the weak sunlight crawl across the floor beneath the window.


	3. Peter

Remus Lupin emerged from his jail cell with a wicked headache, a sour taste in his mouth, and a hangover he wouldn’t have wished on his worst enemy, assuming he’d had a worst enemy. And when he emerged it was into the warm and almost welcome greeting of Peter Pettigrew, who clapped him on the cheek, winced and frowned at him, and held out a clean jumper.

‘Marry me,’ Remus sighed.

‘Er, no,’ Peter answered, and smiled finally. ‘But thank you for the offer.’ Remus shucked his filthy shirt right there in the chilly corridor, ignoring the tired hoots and whistles from the other cell occupants with whom he had probably gotten acquainted at some point during the night before, what little he remembered of it. The smell of laundry-fresh wool was like heaven.

A Muggle police officer was waiting for them, not very patiently, and Remus put on a shamed face when the uniformed man directed a strict gaze at him. He escorted the Remus and Peter through a locked gate, and from there into a small, white-walled lobby and a large desk of that smooth, imposing Muggle plastics. There he picked up a clipboard, and held it out.

Under Peter’s watchful eye Remus took it, though his eyes crossed as soon as he tried to read it. The officer jabbed a finger at the bottom half of the page.

‘This is your release form,’ the man told him. ‘Sign here. Good. And here.’

He obeyed, but thought it best to ask, ‘What does it say?’

‘That you were released at six o’clock Monday evening. That you’ve been given back your things.’

He looked up, pen poised over the second blank line. ‘Have I then?’

With a stony face, the officer took a box from the desk and held it out. Remus took it and looked inside. There were things in it, to be sure, though he didn’t recognise a one of them and they all smelled very strongly of gin. ‘Right,’ he said.

‘Sign.’ So Remus did, awkwardly holding his box and the clipboard and the pen, and then Peter had to take it so that he could sign as well. Once the clipboard had been through the both of them it went back to the officer who, if anything, looked stiffer than before.

‘You,’ the officer said tightly, ‘are a lucky young man.’

It took everything Remus had in him not to roll his eyes. ‘Yes sir.’

‘You ought to have been arrested.’

His recollection of the previous night was definitely fuzzy. ‘I wasn’t?’

‘If it had been my call,’ the man stressed, glowering at him, ‘you would have been. Drunk and disorderly. Disturbing the peace. Getting into a common brawl. I would have said you needed to be taught a lesson.’

He called up his shame face again, and transferred his gaze down into the box. No, still none of it familiar, although he was glad to see some Muggle cash notes remaining.

‘I hope that a night in lock-up will teach you that there are consequences to that sort of behaviour.’

‘I’m sure it will, sir.’

If anyone was convinced by anything anyone had said, it didn’t show. Certainly Peter was sceptical, and Remus couldn’t have repeated a word of the lecture he’d just received, and the officer hadn’t shown any capacity to wear an expression that wasn’t unpleasant.

‘Go home,’ the Muggle said finally. Peter hooked a hand under Remus’s elbow and pulled sharply, and so Remus followed where he went, out the glass doors and into the sunlight. On a completely unfamiliar street.

‘Blimey,’ Remus said. ‘Where are we?’

‘South Lambeth,’ Peter replied, in that amused-but-not-that-amused voice he sometimes had. Often, with Remus.

‘Bloody fuck.’ He was impressed. ‘Any idea how I got here?’

‘Oh, honestly, Remus.’ Peter at last let his disappointment show. ‘When are you going to grow out of this? It’s not like it’s my idea of a holiday to come bail you out of jail!’

‘You didn’t bail me,’ he protested. ‘You heard him, I wasn’t arrested.’

‘I mean it, Remus.’

‘I didn’t ask for your help. I didn’t ask for _anyone’s_ help.’

Inexplicably Peter’s mouth went soft, and his fingers loosened their dig into his elbow. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You didn’t. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need it.’ He pointed across the street to a sign bearing the 'Underground' symbol. 'Come on, we need to get back to Holborn before we can floo.’

After that, Peter was largely silent, except to offer him a Pepper Up between the stops for Embankment and Charing Cross. Remus sat very still in the swaying tube carriage, trying not to vomit, and trying even harder not to think.

 

**

 

It had begun sometime in his seventh year.

Remus had been under the werewolf curse for ten years. A full decade. It meant– according to a medical treatise written in 1652 and, perhaps not coincidentally, to Ministry Directive 297 Section IV Paragraph 3– that Remus was considered a mature werewolf.

It had had something to do with having spent several years building three invaluable, if somewhat exclusive, relationships with the boys who had been his best friends, his life lines, his secret-keepers, and also his roommates. When Sirius Black casually told a curious Slytherin where Remus disappeared to one night of the month, Remus had to cope with a glitch in his normally smooth daily operations. He had been unprepared for suddenly finding himself loathing the only company he was used to keeping. He’d struggled through learning to be more engaging, more outgoing, making friends out of acquaintances and finding that popularity didn’t always depend on Quidditch skills, good looks, or a willingness to follow blindly. Consequently even when sheer misery had eventually reunited the Marauders, Remus took note of the lesson he’d learnt. He walked more confidently after those brief months on his own.

Fifteen had felt immortal, a morass of agony and loneliness and unexpected little victories. But he didn’t stay fifteen. He became a mature werewolf, and according to every authority on the subject, that meant he could expect to decline shortly.

Remus had discovered very early on that Ministry Directives and Werewolf Studies and Wizard Councils of the Greater Jersey Area generally had little intercourse with reality. He had never been consumed with a desire for the flesh of virgins. Fifteen had proven that he didn’t mate for life. He didn’t need to be restrained in silver chains or cages during the transformation and he was certainly capable of receiving a normal wizarding education. He had even voted when he reached his majority. But there was something about looking at a page in one of those ancient books that smelt of must and wisdom and seeing his death written there that made it all seem final.

Sometime in his seventh year, then, Remus concluded that he would die before he was twenty.

The first time he’d confessed it– hating himself every moment for his weakness– Sirius had laughed at him. He’d said it again, much later, to James, who at eighteen had shown some evidence of not always being a cock-up. James had told Lily who had told Angharad who had told Hannah, the girl he was dating, who had told Peter, who had told Sirius, who of course already knew but still repeated it to Frank Longbottom. Within a week anyone Remus had ever met knew he thought he was doomed, and he received sympathy cards from two of James’s co-workers who misunderstood and thought Remus was already dead.

He’d graduated with distinction, found a flat to share with Peter. He worked as the morning manager at the Crazy Carneades supermarket in Diagon Alley. “Today’s Special is TRIPE: Perfect for Your Afternoon Divination.” And somewhere in the middle of being nineteen and responsible and grown up, Remus Lupin looked at a calendar and realised his time was running out.

He had himself a massive drunk, and he woke up in bed with a girl he’d met in a pub in Camden. Her hair was long and her dark smooth skin was beautiful and she said her name was Rainbow. Somewhere between the fifteen galleons he spent on shots for the both of them and the bedroom sheets that smelt like strong weed, he told her that he was going to die. She told him he better get started living, then. It seemed like excellent advice.

He was with the Anti-Nazi League at Southall during the riot in 1979. He joined gay-rights marches and Vietnam protests. He helped stage a sit-in on the lawn of the Ministry of Magic to fight conservative restrictions on cursed wizards and spent fifteen days in custody for it. He learnt to play the guitar and he danced on stage with The Clash. He smoked hash, he drank his body weight in strong alcohol, and participated in some very dodgy sex games with the wonderful people who helped him do it all. It was a brilliant six months.

Until Peter ruined it all. He’d cleared their flat of anything even vaguely narcotic, poured out litres of vodka and rum, demanded three months of rent and goaded Remus into a fist-fight. And then, like the friend he was, he’d forgiven Remus everything and told him to deal with the underlying problem or wake up very surprised on 10 March.

Which, Remus thought as they exited the tube at Holborn, was today. He’d made it to twenty after all.

 

**

 

They walked back to their flat in Egham from the nearest floo station, enjoying the languid warmth of a pleasant spring evening. Peter said, ‘Reckon the others will want to come over for supper. Might already be there.’

Remus bit back a groan. ‘I don’t know if I’m up for it, Wormtail.’

‘They won’t mind. You’ve been avoiding them and they know it,’ his flatmate reminded him. ‘You owe them at least a few hours on your birthday.’

‘Look, I’ve just spent the night in prison–‘

‘Which is entirely your fault.’

‘–and I don’t think it’s being that inconsiderate to want to clean up a bit,’ he finished, ignoring the interruption. ‘Prongs and Pads will understand.’

Peter was trying not to look wounded, but it wasn’t quite working, and Remus reckoned he wasn’t trying all that hard anyhow. ‘We could invite your _other_ friends,’ he said stiffly. ‘If you’d rather see them than us.’

He sighed, and shifted his box to the opposite hip. ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’

‘Well it’s how it looks.’ Peter rubbed his nose. ‘You never want to do these things with us.’

‘I asked you just last week if you wanted to come on the pub crawl.’

‘You were going with people I don’t know! People _you_ don’t even know. You never have fun when we’re there. You’re always trying to ditch us if we come along. We’re not blind, Moony!’

‘If you’re so angry at me then why do you even care what I do?’

‘Because, you big wank,’ Peter snapped. ‘We swore a hundred times to be best friends forever. And we remember that even if you don’t.’ He delivered that last pronouncement in triumph just as they reached the steps of their building. Remus, awash in guilt and anger and the certainty that he was a bigger ass than Uranus, glared at Peter’s back as the other man unlocked the door. He had just about worked himself round to an apology when Peter opened it, and they were hit with a jarring cacophony of whistles, squawkers, and horns. James reached through the doorway and pulled Remus into his own flat.

It was a small space and it was crammed with people. Remus saw Lily and Frank, and Sirius and Kingsley and Alice and Tom Bones and one of the Creevey boys, and there was Rainbow and Amanda and Jim-or-John who often joined him on bar nights– a lot of the people who’d taken to showing up at Remus’s flat for 'one more drink,' for Friday night outers that happened on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays too. And all of them were standing under a huge banner that read– HAPPY DEATH DAY.

The yelling and cheering began to die down when he didn’t react. James slung an arm across Remus’s shoulders, grinning like a loon and wearing a black party hat. To his horror, Remus realised everyone wore hats like that. That the streamers were all black too, that the cake on the table was a stormy grey. That James was trying to force a black tissue crown onto his head.

Behind him, Peter burst out, ‘James, you’re fucking awful sometimes!’

Remus said, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and ran for the stairs and the second-level bog.

 

**

 

He’d passed into dry-heaves. Remus reached for the pull-cord for the third time, and leant his aching head against the cool porcelain edge of the toilet as it flushed away the waste. He felt stretched thin and weak; stars burst against his eyelids and he had the uncomfortable sensation of floating even while feeling every chilly edge of the tiles and scratchy bath-mat beneath him.

He didn’t understand at first that the pounding was outside his own imagination and coming from the door. He could vaguely remember locking it. ‘Go away,’ he muttered.

‘Moony? It’s me.’

It was Peter. Who gave him only another minute of peace before light flashed through the keyhole, and the door snicked. Peter pushed it open until it bumped Remus’s legs, and then he squeezed into the tiny closet, his wand in one hand. When the door shut again behind him and Peter sat with his back against it, Remus turned a bleary gaze on him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Wormtail told him in a little voice. ‘I didn’t know they were going to do that. I thought it was a regular party.’

‘Not your fault,’ Remus croaked. For a wild moment his stomach rebelled again, but there was nothing left in it. He spat into the toilet bowl, but the taste of his own sick remained.

Peter’s unhappy explanation continued. ‘He thought it would be funny. Honestly. They all thought you’d just laugh. They didn’t know how seriously... how seriously you took it.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t think I knew either. Not til just then, when I– when I saw your face.’

The bright overhead light on all the white fixtures was spearing his eyes. Remus covered them his arm, and said, ‘What about my face?’

Peter sat quietly for a bit. Remus had nearly forgotten he’d asked anything, absorbed so much in the misery of a migraine and attendant nausea. Then Peter murmured, ‘You looked humiliated. And... frightened.’

‘Well.’ He managed a dry, bitter smile. ‘So glad to have had such an audience for it, too.’

‘They’re gone.’ Peter sighed, and stretched out his legs, so that his shoes nudged Remus’s knees. ‘I kicked them out. And Prongs and Padfoot and Lily are getting rid of all the decorations.’

If he hadn’t spent the night before getting thoroughly trashed and the morning after sharing a cot with a convict and feeling sorry for himself, Remus thought he might have been able to resist the tears that were suddenly forming in his eyes. He squeezed his eyelids tightly shut, but it only pressed them out. Two fell hot and wet down his cheeks.

‘I hate being this way,’ he admitted.

Peter didn’t answer right away. Peter had never been comfortable with these moments. But who was? Remus wanted to be alone and he desperately didn’t, and Peter sat there in the loo with him despite a concerted effort to avoid such a circumstance.

Peter said, ‘Then don’t be.’ He nudged Remus’s calf. ‘I’ll help you. And when they get their heads out of their asses, so will Sirius and James.’

He sniffed hard, and wiped his face, and raised his head. ‘I have to get mine out of mine first,’ he said.

Peter grinned a lopsided grin at him. ‘It’ll help.’

‘How many times can we do horrible things to each other and still be best friends?’

‘There’ll probably be more. None of us knows when to stop. That’s why there’s always the four of us.’ Peter shrugged. ‘Forever,’ he added simply. ‘That’s just how it was meant to be.’

‘Yes,’ Remus agreed, and felt a little better. Marginally. ‘Friends forever,’ he echoed. It had to be, if he could live to be twenty and find the Marauders still with him. He rubbed his face hard, one more time, and said, ‘If they haven’t thrown out the cake, we should eat it.’

‘Think you can keep it down?’

‘I intend to try,’ he said, and Peter helped him to his feet. Each gripped the other’s forearms for just a bit longer than necessary, dragging out the moment of shared understanding. Then Peter opened the door, and they went downstairs together.


	4. Alastor

‘Moody.’

Alastor had always kept a loose over-hand grip on his wand, the way he’d been taught more years ago than he cared to recall. It made for grace of movement, for quickness of delivery, and it protected the wrist and fingers from damage during an expelliamus attack. But he’d had his wand– cherry, with a Threstral tail hair– in his right hand for nearly seventy hours, and he was far, far beyond a loose grip. It was all he could do to uncramp his fingers long enough to scratch his misshapen nose.

‘Moody!’

‘What?’ he snapped, turning away from the corner and the bodies stacked there. Arthur Weasley, his stout young face pale beneath the grime and sweat, stood in the doorway. ‘Well?’ Alastor added impatiently.

Weasley shook his head, not in denial. ‘We found a live one,’ he murmured. In dismay.

The last ‘live ones’ they’d found had been Frank and Alice Longbottom, left mad and raving in the remains of their house. Finding the live ones was almost as bad as finding the dead. In the seventy hours since Voldemort had been destroyed and the Auror Corps had swung into search-and-rescue, Alastor had developed the weary, bruised notion that finding the live ones was no special favour.

He followed Weasley down the creaky hallway of Tom Riddle’s childhood home, the once-great manor house that perched at the top of a hill like its gargoyle of a master. They had already cleared the lower floors, discovering only hastily burnt books and papers and one room full of corpses– seven missing Aurors and two Ministry secretaries who would now be added to the list of casualties. And now; now, a live one.

Weasley lifted his wand, and said, ‘ _Lumos_.’ He aimed the glowing tip into the open doorway of the room at the end of the dark corridor. Alastor squinted hard, seeing only dusty velvet drapes, peeling silk wallpaper– there, huddled in the corner, the body.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

Weasley glanced at him. ‘Remus Lupin,’ he answered after a brief hesitation.

He could remember, distantly, feeling euphoric at the news. Voldemort was gone. The war was won. The Light had triumphed. That was seventy hours ago.

‘If you’re going to blame me,’ he said slowly, ‘there’ll probably be a queue.’

There was a little, curious flicker of some emotion over Arthur’s chubby face. Then he shook his head. ‘There was no reason to think he was alive,’ the younger man demurred. ‘Or– on our side.’

‘Should have done.’ Alastor sighed, and scrubbed his face with his free hand. ‘Dumbledore was right all along.’ He glanced down at his own wand, wrapped tightly in his thick, sore fingers. ‘Are we almost done here?’

‘Finch-Fletchly and Higgs are taking the attic. There’s no-one else here.’

‘I’ll take him to Mungo’s,’ Alastor said. ‘Go home when you’re done. Try to sleep.’

‘Same to you,’ Arthur returned. He hesitated once more, but in the end, he left Alastor to it, and disappeared. Alastor waited for the sound of his footsteps to fade before he entered the room that held Lupin. It was little more than a storage closet, empty of furniture, without even a window. He stood over the body for a moment, trying to decide if he could get up again once he knelt. At last, carefully, he went to his knees. He touched the tip of his wand to Lupin’s shoulder, and said, ‘ _Enervate_.’

Lupin woke with a gasp. ‘I won’t– I won’t tell you– I don’t know–‘

‘Shhh,’ Alastor began. He exchanged his wand for a comforting, gentle hand, pressing lightly on Lupin’s chest. Beneath his palm he could feel a suddenly frantic heartbeat, the sharp, frightened inhale. He could just see Lupin’s wide eyes roaming the darkness, and felt fingers scrabble briefly, weakly, on his arm. ‘Shhh,’ he repeated. ‘I’m Alastor Moody. I’m an Auror with the Ministry of Magic. We’ve got you now, you’re safe.’

Lupin shuddered under his hand. ‘I won’t tell,’ he whispered.

‘I know,’ Alastor soothed him. ‘You didn’t tell. You did well.’ He spared a moment to hope that he wouldn’t splinch them both by Apparating on an empty stomach after too many hours of adrenaline and rage, and gripped Lupin carefully about the shoulders. ‘I’ve got you, son,’ he said, and then the arms of magic surrounded them both and sent them spiraling out of the old manor.

 

**

 

Weasley found him again in Mungo’s, looking marginally better rested than he had the night previous, though immensely cheered. He showed Alastor his paper– a _Daily Prophet_ , freshly printed– and the bold headlines.

‘They’re already speculating what’s become of Harry Potter,’ Weasley told him. ‘Word got round that Dumbledore had taken him away.’

Away to the glass isle, Alastor thought, though the infant Harry Potter was not a Pendragon, and Voldemort had already been defeated. ‘If we do our work well, then the boy can come out of hiding in a few weeks,’ he said aloud. ‘It’s not the same as getting his parents back, but I’d be just as happy to present him with an Azkaban top-full of murdering Death-Eathers.’

Weasley dropped into the chair beside Alastor’s, stretching his legs and dropping his head back with a heart-felt sigh. ‘Crouch released a statement about Dolohov and Malfoy claiming to have been under the Imperious curse.’

‘Damn the man,’ Alastor muttered. He’d advised against it, vehemently, but Ministers did what they thought would make them look good, and Alastor had long since stopped looking for sense from a politician. ‘We’ll be flooded with bastards all claiming the same thing at the top of their lungs.’

‘And escaping lawful punishment because of it,’ Weasley agreed. ‘Still. They might be more likely to turn themselves in, if they think they’ll get off easy.’

‘There’s not enough Veritaserum in the country,’ Alastor mused sourly.

‘No need.’ Weasley tilted his head without lifting it, a rueful glint in his weary eyes. ‘The Ministry will pardon half of them and deal down the rest.’

‘Did you come here just to brighten my day?’

Weasley grinned, then dropped an arm over his eyes. ‘No. To visit Bones. He’s going to recover. His healers think they can regrow the arm.’

‘Lucky.’

‘Who are you here for?’

Alastor only grunted. The stump of his left knee had been aching for hours, but since he’d finally been forced to sit, the inactivity was drawing attention to the bone-deep thrum of agony there. The leather straps of his prosthetic limb cut into his swollen flesh, and he knew it would be days before he could walk without pain, longer if he continued to use it– and he had to. The momentary rest he’d allowed himself wouldn’t last.

Weasley pushed himself up by his elbows, achieving a more comfortable slump in his hard wooden chair. The small, curtained waiting area where Alastor had been attempting to secure a few quiet minutes of solitude offered no comforts other than their two seats and a small table set with a self-warming tea kettle that was, unfortunately, not self-filling. But it did have proximity. Weasley followed Alastor’s gaze toward the second door to the right, the one currently closed.

‘One of ours?’ Arthur asked.

Alastor grunted. ‘The live one.’

‘Lupin?’ Weasley’s ginger eyebrows climbed his lined forehead. ‘My word,’ he said a moment later. ‘You do feel guilty.’

He grimaced at that. ‘I’ll thank you not to speculate on my state of mind.’

‘You made a command decision. Black spent weeks convincing us Lupin was the mole. And then, given what had happened to the Potters and to Pettigrew, there was no reason to think he was still alive. No reason to look for him, Moody. And we did find him in the end.’

‘I gave up on him,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘Who am I to give up on another human being?’

‘A werewolf.’

‘If you think that matters, Weasley, you’re more of a _Pure-Blood_ than I’ve ever taken you for.’ Even saying it left a bad taste in his mouth, and Weasley was quick to take offence to it, his round cheeks flushing angrily. But his gaze and his voice stayed steady, and Alastor was both surprised and proud.

‘It doesn’t matter to me,’ Weasley said. He looked hard at Alastor. ‘But it mattered to you. You weren’t the only one to suspect him. I always knew him to be an intelligent, honourable man, and I defended him when Black started to raise the fuss, but in the end even I had my doubts. Stronger men than Lupin went to the Dark Lord when he offered them all their dreams come true.’

It had been such a persuasive argument. Voldemort had been reaching out to Dark Creatures almost from the beginning; he’d had giants on his side, Dementors, half the goblin factions, a private arsenal of vampires, veelas, even a powerful lich. And werewolves. The lure of fresh victims was enough for some of the monsters; for others, power and status in a society that had shunned them. For the cursed, the rumours had said, even the promise of a cure. Voldemort had been a man of many secrets and his knowledge of magic was as great as any four masters together. What didn’t the man know that might be exchanged for a service here or there? Alastor had captured and killed a dozen creatures who all had the same story. It had been less than nothing to lump Lupin in with the rest of them and write him off to history.

He still wasn’t half-certain that he only sat in this miserable waiting room because it was Lupin. He knew he was tired. He knew he was hurting. And he knew that the days and weeks and months to follow would be no less physically and even emotionally demanding. They had won the war, yes, but the battles wouldn’t be over for a long time, and there would be no shortage of frustrations to go around. Alastor was field captain of the Auror Corps and it would be his job to testify at trials, to report in closed Ministry debriefings, to oversee interrogations. Lupin was just one young man out of twenty exactly like him, who had been in the wrong place, offended the wrong people, and found himself labelled a traitor. Lupin had lived to prove otherwise and that ought to have been enough.

‘Can’t save them all,’ he heard himself mutter.

‘That’s true,’ Weasley said. ‘That is very unfortunate, and very true.’

Whether he might have convinced himself to abandon his watch and go back to the copious work that awaited him was rendered moot by the opening of that second door to the right. A Healer appeared in the doorway, looking sober, but satisfied.

‘Ah, Mr Moody,’ he said. ‘Our patient is awake now. He’s asking questions that I thought... well, that I thought you might be best qualified to answer.’

Weasley clapped him on the shoulder, then stood. ‘I’m back to the office,’ he said. ‘Going to check in on Second Shift and see if they need an extra pair of hands.’

‘I’ll meet you back there,’ Alastor told him, and watched him duck out the curtain. With a groan, Alastor shoved himself to his feet, thought he might stay there after all, and went into Lupin’s room.

The blood had all been cleaned away and the soft edges of blindingly white cotton bandages had replaced it. Lupin watched him enter with haunted eyes shadowed by deep bruises, and his mouth was a little slash of pale lips and pain.

‘They told me that you found me,’ he greeted Alastor.

Who saw a chair in the corner, and took it gratefully. ‘Yes,’ he answered at length. ‘Our team.’

Lupin lifted a hand wrapped in that white white fabric, and let it drop to the blanket. ‘Thank you.’

Alastor nodded stiffly. ‘What do you want to know?’

There was something lurking in the remote expression Lupin wore, something beyond his discomfort and his ordeal. ‘The men who held me there,’ he said, in a strange polite little voice. ‘The Death-Eaters. It seems like forever ago now– they would ask questions and then they would leave. And then one day they all came back and I could see that they were frightened. They wouldn’t tell us anything. But they started to kill. They hadn’t done that before.’

That explained the corpses. Some of them Alastor had known, had trained himself, had worked alongside.

‘They were frightened,’ Lupin repeated hollowly. ‘And horribly angry. And they said–‘ His breath hitched, just the tiniest bit. ‘I heard them saying to each other that Voldemort was dead.’

It was then that Alastor identified the look in Lupin’s face, the emotion he was trying to keep from his voice. He was a man who was hungry.

‘Yes,’ Alastor said, and watched the play of joy and victory and a certain vicious gratification. He expected the next question, and the answer was almost on his lips before Lupin opened his mouth.

‘Did he suffer?’

How many times had he heard that exact word? That tenuous grip on justice, on fairness, on a world where those things had had meaning that was better than an eye for an eye, a world only faintly remembered now. A world that didn’t exist for people who had already lived through hell.

‘I hope to any God he did,’ Alastor told the young man in the bed, and watched the bandaged hands clench, clench hard; and slowly release.

‘Who did it?’ Lupin asked him, into a long silence.

He released his last breath into a sigh. ‘A baby,’ he said, with a heavy appreciation for the irony. ‘Harry Potter.’

He had not expected Lupin to go so grey, to look so suddenly ill. ‘No,’ Lupin said in voice gone to nothing. ‘No, he’s– he’s in hiding. The Fidelius–‘

‘Was broken.’

Lupin shook his head. ‘Then Sirius is dead.’

‘Why do you say that?’

The young man lifted his head. ‘Because he would die before he’d let anything happen to James and Lily and Harry.’

He had never once considered that Lupin didn’t know who had betrayed him. Faced abruptly with the necessity of telling him, Alastor felt a little ill himself. ‘He’s not dead,’ he managed, glad that his own voice was too hoarse with long, long days to waver. ‘I’m sorry to say this. He turned them over to Voldemort. He gave away his Secret.’

He watched Lupin’s eyes swim in shock, watched shock turn into numbness. They didn’t speak again, until the Healer returned to find them quiet. Alastor slept in the waiting room that night, sprawled in an uncomfortable chair and finding even an exhausted sleep uneasy and filled with images from nightmares, the bodies of his friends and students, the smell of must and death in pitch-black hallways, the smell of despair.

 

**

 

Alastor left his hat and tweed cloak on the chair he’d come to think of as his, and tried to scrub his weariness off his face by sheer dint of strong hands. It didn’t do much but remind him that he hadn’t even seen a shaving blade in a week.

The waiting room was, as always, empty, the self-heating kettle giving off a little glow of warmth but holding no water. Alastor glared at the door he meant to go through– eventually– knowing the news he had to report would not be particularly welcome, and knowing he had to impart the burden anyway. ‘Can’t save them all,’ he reminded himself. He fished a folded bit of parchment from his cloak, and knocked sharply on the door to Remus Lupin’s ward.

When he entered, Lupin was sitting up in his bed, the small ball of greenish light hovering over his shoulder providing enough illumination for the book that was spread on his lap. From his guilty start and the shadows under his eyes, however, Alastor could see that the young man hadn’t read a word.

‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘Sirius Black is guilty. There won’t be a trial.’ He held out the parchment, a copy of the official notice that would be passed about in the Ministry. Lupin took it, but did not read it, either. It joined the book on his thighs.

‘Did he– say anything?’

Alastor grunted. ‘He’s mad, Lupin.’ He rubbed a hand over his mouth. ‘Madmen don’t say much, I’ve found. If he’s lucky, it will mean a short stay in Azkaban.’ The mad never lasted long there.

When the silences that so often fell between them began, Alastor made an effort to divert it. ‘When are they planning to release you?’

‘They’re not sure.’ The bandages on the hands were long gone, the wrappings about the chest dispensed with only the night before. Alastor propped a sore knee against the edge of the bed, and tapped once, twice, against the cotton sheets.

‘Do you know why torturers go for the face?’ he asked.

Lupin looked up. The scars that crossed his cheeks, nose, and chin were angry, red and still swelling. They matched one that Alastor wore on his own left cheek, through a now-empty eye socket.

‘The face,’ Alastor said, ‘is the seat of our identity. How people recognise us. How we see ourselves. They attack the face so that every time we look in a mirror we will see _them_ and remember what they did.’

Lupin’s voice, too, was level, but there was something off, something different in– his posture, his eyes, maybe. ‘It’s a good plan.’

‘Yes,’ Alastor agreed. ‘It is. There’s no way of fighting it.’ He shrugged. ‘So don’t.’

Lupin laughed, just a little laugh, and one not entirely pleasant. ‘That’s your advice? Let them win?’

‘They’ve already won. And I don’t believe in fighting a lost cause.’ He tapped the sheets again. ‘Who you are has changed. You’ve been through too much. You couldn’t be the way you were even if your face were perfect as an angel’s. That’s war, Lupin. That’s reality.’

Lupin’s look faded into puzzlement. Then that, too, faded. After a little while, he nodded.

Alastor returned the gesture, meaning it as a good-bye. He turned to the door to leave.

‘Mr Moody,’ Lupin said softly to his back. ‘Thank you.’

Not long after– a month, perhaps, in the middle of the Lestrange trials and not too much before the revelation that Barty Crouch Jr was a Death-Eater– Alastor Moody received a small package from St Mungo’s. It contained an item he had never seen before: a glass eyeball with curious magical properties. The note inside was short and written in an unfamiliar hand, but when he read it, Alastor knew immediately who the sender was.

_In hope that no-one will ever get near your face again._

Weasley christened him ‘Mad-Eye’, never quite comfortable with a magical eye capable of showing Alastor three-hundred-and-sixty degrees up, down, sideways, and backwards, but the name– and the new look– suited Alastor just fine.


	5. Regulus

Regulus didn’t know he had company until he felt a hand on his shoulder. He dropped the moulding cheese he held and had his fingers wrapped around his wand before thought caught up with him, and he realised he’d scrambled to his feet to face Remus Lupin.

Who had drawn on him, as well. They stood that way for a long minute, while Regulus felt his heart racing so hard it would burst out of his chest. Dizziness enfolded him and he staggered against the open larder, and the tip of Lupin’s wand followed him.

‘Just turn around and leave,’ he snarled, too tired to be menacing.

Lupin didn’t budge. ‘Give me a reason not to call the Aurors and have you shut away forever, Black.’

‘I’m not here to hurt anyone, damn it. Don’t make me hurt you. Just leave!’

In the glow from the larder lamp he saw Lupin’s eyes flicker to the mess he’d left on the floor. Broken eggshells. An overturned tin emptied of its biscuits. A bunch of carrots too shrivelled to be eaten. Half a head of cabbage, gone blue and fuzzy. Three yoghurt cartons scraped clean. The browning cores of four apples that had been soft and mealy. The remains of a roast, definitely past its expiration, but eaten all the same, and a spilled jug of lumpy, sour milk. He wasn’t looking for it, but he saw the hard line of Lupin’s mouth ease, and then the wand pointed at his head lowered a little.

‘You’re running,’ Lupin guessed. He looked back at Regulus, capturing his eyes. ‘Who from, I wonder?’

‘Everyone,’ Regulus rasped. ‘I’ll be gone in a few hours. I just wanted– I just wanted to rest.’ _Please_ sat awkward and unused on his tongue, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to verbalise it, not to this man, not to anyone ever again. ‘Just walk away and I won’t have to hurt you.’

‘Did you know about Sirius?’

He ought to have expected it, but he hadn’t. To his intense shame, his eyes filled with tears. He dashed them away with a rough hand. ‘Fucking bastard never trusted me,’ he managed. ‘Did he tell you?’

Lupin mimicked his movement, but only to touch his cheek. Regulus didn’t think those scars had been there before. They looked new. After a long time, Lupin said, ‘No,’ and it took Regulus a moment to remember that he had asked a question.

There was no strength left in his legs, and what little wind desperation had given him was fading. His stomach was cramping, and the smell of the rotting food left him nauseous. Lupin took a step toward him, then another, nudging aside a stale loaf of bread with one shoe; and then he reached out, and carefully plucked Regulus’s wand from his hand. Regulus let him take it, almost resigned to his impending arrest. They might at least let him sleep, the Aurors.

‘Come lie down before you fall,’ Lupin said shortly, and wrapped a hand around his upper arm.

He was led out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. It was beyond dark in there– he’d been afraid to turn on the lights, even knowing that no-one would think to look for him here, in his brother’s abandoned Muggle flat. The carpet was littered with over-turned furniture, emptied drawers full of papers, of music records, scattered photographs. The Aurors, maybe even the Death Eaters, had already been here, combed over his brother’s possessions, and left the place looking like a whirlwind had hit. Lupin brushed crumpled newspaper and the shards of a broken vase from the sofa, dragged the dusty, heavy quilt from the chair and laid it down over the mess. Then he pressed Regulus onto it, and propped a limp cushion behind his head. Before Regulus, surprised and suspicious, could thank him, Lupin disappeared back into the kitchen, and Regulus could hear him cleaning in there, heard water running and a kettle being brought to the boil by charm, rather than stove-top. Regulus waited tensely for the lights to come on, but either Lupin understood his caution or didn’t want to face the brightness, himself.

Sitting still for even a few minutes after nearly three weeks of never so much as closing his eyes was enough to do him in. He’d achieved at least momentary safety, his churning stomach was too weak to reject even the pathetic leavings of Sirius’s kitchen. He fell into a light doze, still too tense to sleep– Lupin was only in the other room and not terribly long ago they’d been on opposite sides– when the sofa dipped next to him he woke with a jolt and a witless scare, groping for his wand and not finding it.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lupin said. ‘I’ve got it.’ He eased into a seat beside Regulus, and held out two mugs. Regulus took the nearest– tea, sugar only, with the milk gone bad– and was drinking before he thought of poison, before he thought of Veritaserum, before he thought of anything but being parched to the bone. The second mug proved to be chicken broth, and he abandoned the tea swiftly to gulp the soup. ‘Careful,’ Lupin cautioned him, the exact shape of his body lost somewhere in the darkness. ‘How long has it been since you’ve eaten?’

‘Four days,’ he gasped, heady at the heat that spread through his torso and into his gut. ‘I had found a safe house. I couldn’t leave it.’

‘Then why leave at all? Was it because you were hungry?’

He shook his head once, hard. ‘This was before. They were getting too close. Had to leave.’ The soup was almost gone. The familiar feeling of being overwhelmed hovered just beyond his thin cloak of control. He forced himself to sip the last few swallows, fighting his regret, already thinking of the hot tea in his right fist. He hadn’t seen tea in almost a month and he could smell it.

Out of the night, Lupin’s voice asked, ‘Who was getting close, Regulus?’

‘ _They_ were,’ he managed, and a shudder took him. It didn’t leave. He shuddered again, and some of that precious tea slopped over his fingers in a quick scalding wave. He clutched it between both hands, shivering so hard that his teeth clattered against each other.

In response Lupin stood and drew off his own coat; a moment later he settled it about Regulus’s shoulders. Then he took the mug that had held the soup, and refilled it in the kitchen. Regulus accepted it eagerly, and Lupin repeated procedure with the tea, bringing it back steaming and smelling fresh, smelling deep and comforting and healing.

When he had drunk all the he could and sat limply wishing for more, holding Lupin’s wool coat tight about his chest, he asked, ‘Why are you being so kind to me?’

He wondered when Lupin didn’t answer right away. At last the other man said, ‘Maybe so I’ll feel good about myself when I turn you in.’

He could accept that. ‘What would happen to me? I’d go to prison? To Azkaban?’

‘Yes.’ Another pause, this one shorter. ‘Maybe. They’ve been– they’ve been letting your kind off.’

‘Which ones?’ he demanded, alarmed. ‘Tell me who!’

‘Malfoy. MacNair and– I think Goyle. Avery. Nott.’

‘What about Wilkes? Rosier? Rodolphus– Bellastrix and Rabastan? What about–‘

‘The Lestranges are in Azkaban. I don’t know about the others.’

‘Mulciber? Travers? Barty Crouch– did you know he was one of us?’

‘You mean his son? They caught him.’

‘But you haven’t caught all of them.’ Regulus left the sofa to pace about the room, kicking aside a small end-table from his path. ‘They’ll kill me,’ he muttered to himself, having to hear it aloud. ‘If they know where I am they won’t let me live.’ He scrubbed his face hair, pulled at his hair until his eyes teared. He whirled and pointed at Lupin with a shaking hand. ‘Give me back my wand. I’ll leave. I’ll go away and you’ll never have to see me again.’

Lupin didn’t leave the sofa, didn’t try to come near, did nothing more threatening than sit very still and not produce Regulus’s wand on command. In that steady, unrevealing voice he had always had, he said, ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’ve done, why they’re after you.’

‘Because you won’t understand!’

‘I promise you I will try.’

He kicked at the table again, forgetting he was past it, and stumbled when his foot met only empty air. He fell to his knees and hurt his wrist when he landed on it. Lupin was at his side immediately with reaching fingers, and Regulus skittered away from him before remembering who it was who knelt beside him. He surrendered his hand for inspection, wincing as Lupin cast a quiet ‘ _Lumos_.’ He opened his mouth to protest, but the light was small and weak, barely enough to illuminate the white square of his palm.

‘You’ve cut yourself,’ Lupin said.

He had. Once he saw the blood he felt it, warm against his cold skin, trickling down his wrist with a sharp little ache.

Lupin pulled a kerchief from somewhere and bound his wrist, sat in the dust beside him putting firm pressure over the wound. Regulus, bemused, exhausted, on the verge of a scream that had been hiding in him for weeks, asked voicelessly, ‘Why did you come here tonight?’

He heard Lupin’s soft exhalation, felt it whisper against his cheek. ‘To pack away the flat. To look at his things. To see if– there was a clue, something I missed. To look for secret letters. Maybe just to set fire to everything.’

Hesitant, Regulus said, ‘I’m sorry. About the Potters. And Pettigrew.’

‘Just– tell me if you knew.’

He shook his head in a quick, frantic denial. ‘No. I swear to you.’

‘You were trying to get out, weren’t you.’

Tried and failed, like he failed at everything. The memory of the Cruciatus curse was fresh and immediate, everything around it falling into a hazy film of fantasy. The agony. The unrelenting questions. The false, false, false kindness in a tender voice asking him to confess, so that he might be spared.

He said, ‘When I heard it was him– how could he do it? I told him. I told him what it was like. I sat in this room and he told me he would help me escape, but he never did. Now I know why. What a game it must have seemed to him. How he must have gloated when Lord Voldemort told him about his traitorous little brother. Maybe he’s the one who sold me out. He might even– he might even have been there when they interrogated me, I couldn’t see their faces– he might have– might have watched them do that to me– maybe he did it–‘

Lupin’s open palm smoothed along his cheek. He flinched from it, then craved its warmth. It was a gentle caress, fine and dry against his tears. ‘He can’t hurt you anymore,’ Lupin whispered.

Anguish rose up in his throat, choking him. ‘You don’t know what I did. You don’t know. He was my brother. He’s my brother and I love him. He said– he told me–‘

‘Shh.’ Arms went carefully around him, and Regulus sat stiffly, not understanding at first that it was an embrace, because embraces were foreign to his world. The only embraces he’d ever had were from Sirius, and Sirius– Sirius– Sirius was just like the rest of them, a Black, a monster wearing a smile to hide his ugliness.

He let Lupin bring him back to the sofa, let Lupin arrange him as if he were a doll, felt a blanket settle over his body. His head felt open and dizzy, empty and roaring like a seashell. Sirius had brought him a seashell once, after a visit to Dover that Regulus had been too young to join. ‘Listen, Reg,’ his brother had said, holding it to his ear, and laughing when Regulus asked what spell had made the noise come from inside.

He slipped from waking to dreaming without noticing.

 

**

 

Albus turned the stained parchment into the candlelight, brushing his fingertips over the hasty scrawl, over blots from an imperfect quill, over a rough scratch to the soft surface.

‘He must have been starving,’ Remus said. When he looked up, Albus did not find eyes waiting for him. Remus sat looking at nothing, his gaze unfocussed. His hands sat limp and open on his lap, the fingers just slightly curled about his burden. In the golden quiet of Albus’s office, even the portraits were silent. Headmistress Hildebrand surreptitiously wiped her eyes, in the far right corner. ‘He ate all the food,’ Remus added, as if his pause hadn’t happened. ‘Things I wouldn’t touch. Things I wouldn’t give to pigs in the slop.’

‘He verified what he wrote in this confession?’ Albus asked, though he already felt sure of the answer. Remus nodded once, and Albus accepted it. He set the parchment aside, reluctant, he supposed, to let go; so many had been lost so recently, but now, after nearly a month, to hear of yet another casualty...

‘They’d tortured him.’ Remus sighed, and dropped his eyes to his lap. ‘Because he tried to leave them. We ought to have helped him.’

‘You did.’ Albus released a deep breath himself, and found he had absently covered the parchment with his hand. He did not move it. ‘He died with a friend.’

‘He didn’t have any friends. Sirius saw to that.’ The raw bitterness of that statement was not surprising. Remus turned dark amber eyes to him. ‘Did you know what went on between them? What that madwoman of a mother taught her precious sons to do with each other?’ A moment later he raised a hand. ‘Don’t,’ he said harshly. ‘I don’t want to know if you knew and did nothing.’

Albus knew when to defend himself and when to let anger and grief purge themselves. He weathered the accusation as he had weathered many things in his long life, letting it settle stony and chill in his heart.

After a moment, Remus stood, slipping his token– a locket with a long golden chain– into his pocket. His hand lingered over it after it was out of sight. Albus considered the young man standing before him. ‘Am I correct in guessing that you will be leaving us for a time, Remus?’

‘Yes.’ His former student glanced at him, away, then back again, and this time his gaze was level. ‘To France. I have some distant relatives there.’

‘I hope you will stay in touch. If Regulus was correct–‘ He was already touching the parchment, but he looked, verifying its sad existence again. ‘If Regulus was correct, then Voldemort is not dead, only vanquished. There may yet be cause to reconvene the Order.’

Remus gave him a short nod. ‘If you call, I will come.’

‘That is all that I ask.’ He accepted the second, somewhat more gracious nod, knowing it meant good-bye. He watched Remus descend the rostrum that held his desk to the main floor. He spoke just as Remus’s hand brushed the golden latch of his oak door.

‘I hope that you and your companion fare well and safely on the Continent,’ he said.

Remus stilled, but only for a second, and he did not look back. ‘I have no companion,’ he replied courteously, and he opened the door and left Albus’s office as quietly as he had entered an hour before. Albus let him go, knowing why he hadn’t been trusted, and knowing as well that Remus had left deliberate clues, even allowing him to see the locket, though what the locket meant he did not yet know. He wished with all his soul that the elaborate little dance had not been necessary, but he found no blame in him. No-one could fight a war without leaving the dead and wounded behind them, not even a wizard who had fought Grindewald and won; not a wizard with the Order of Merlin to his name and the Order of the Phoenix at his back; not even a wizard who thought of himself as a teacher first, a warrior second. Remus Lupin would return someday, when he was done hiding. Until then, Albus could do nothing but bury the dead, and wait for Harry Potter.


	6. Gilderoy

Attempting to enter their little camp triumphantly resulted in a stumble and a graceless sprawl by their small fire. Gilderoy spat a clump of grass from his mouth and tried hopelessly to wipe the dirt from his face.

His companion was looking at him dubiously when he raised his head. ‘All right there?’ the other wizard asked.

Gilderoy did manage to draw himself up to the height of his dignity, trying not to think about the greenish stain now decorating the front and left arm of his midnight-blue, gold-trimmed and satin-lined travelling robes. ‘I,’ he said grandly, ‘have uncovered the lair of the vicious Occamy that has been threatening the fair but frightened village of Ystad.’

Remus Lupin stared at him. After a long pause, he said, ‘Are you by any chance a writer?’

Gilderoy took his expression to be awe and jealousy, emotions he might have felt himself if faced with such obvious talent. ‘I am,’ he answered proudly. ‘My published works include _Breaks With Banshees, Holidays With Hags,_ and _Travels With Trolls_.’

In return he got another long pause, which he assumed was necessary for Lupin to absorb the realisation that he was making camp in backwater Scandinavia with someone unexpectedly and internationally famous. Lupin didn’t seem the sort who had much money to spare on books, so it was excusable that he hadn’t immediately recognised Gilderoy’s face– two-time winner of the Witch Weekly Most Charming Smile Award. Gilderoy had found Lupin at a bar, nosing his name about as a guide. Gilderoy, feeling customarily generous with his own good fortune, kindly offered compensation to the tune of twenty Galleons for a little companionship in wilderness while he sought out his newest enemy– an Occamy, a creature reaching fifteen feet in length when fully grown, winged and serpent-like. Ministry of Magic Classification four strikes. Requiring the kind of specialist approach for which Gilderoy Lockhart was justifiably renowned.

Lupin removed a battered pot from the embers of the fire, and stirred their evening soup. He produced a pouch from his belt, and drew a pinch of herbs from within. Gilderoy watched him sprinkle the herbs into the pot and hoped they were only spices. Lupin was a bit of an odd bloke; presumably the reward he would receive at the end of their journey would prevent him from indulging thoughts of poison.

‘Ystad is an artist colony,’ Lupin said finally.

Gilderoy blinked. ‘Your pardon?’

‘Ystad. It’s not really a village. It’s an artist colony. Painters. Retired folk singers. Uni dropouts.’

‘Who will no doubt be intensely grateful when I rid them of the nefarious beast who threatens their safety and aesthetic solitude,’ Gilderoy finished complacently. ‘You’re catching on, my friend.’

Irritation crossed Lupin’s pinched face. Poor sod, Gilderoy mused. The jealousy was really getting to him. ‘Look,’ Lupin said, straining to be polite. ‘Occamies aren’t aggressive. You heard the innkeeper in Trelleborg. It hasn’t gone near the village. Probably some drunken fool got too close to its nest. It’s October. Occamies usually clutch this time of year.’

‘Well, someone is getting a little cranky,’ Gilderoy retorted lightly. ‘Looks like it’s bed for you straight after dinner, young man.’

Lupin’s mouth went tight and funny. Then he sighed, and glared hard at the soup as he stirred it forcefully.

Gilderoy slept poorly– there always seemed to be a pebble under his bedroll, no matter which way he twisted– but Lupin woke him at dawn anyway and produced an acceptable fry-up with the last of their sausages, eggs, and fresh tomatoes. Lupin seemed far more chipper than the night previous, though Gilderoy resented him vastly for it, not being a morning person himself. Still, he made an effort to comb his hair and fix it with a charm, and he chose his forest-green robes with the pale yellow piping and gloves of kid-leather to match his brown suede boots. Lupin– compounding poverty with appalling fashion sense– wore exactly what he had been wearing in all the time Gilderoy had known him: a Muggle wool coat and denim trousers. He added a fuzzy balaclava hat to _l’accoutrement_ in a nod to the chilly morning weather.

Gilderoy made a mental note to keep Lupin out of any pictures.

‘Where did you find the Occamy?’ Lupin asked him as they set off.

‘Four klicks to the west and straight on til morning, my good fellow.’

‘You walked four kilometres last night by yourself? In the dark, knowing there are magical creatures in this forest?’

Gilderoy allowed himself an indulgent chuckle. ‘Don’t worry, Lupin, I’m sure one day you’ll be just as fearless.’ He patted his wand, secured in a gilt leather holster at his waist. ‘I’ve got all the wits and weapons I need right here.’

Lupin muttered something that sounded a bit like ‘I certainly hope so.’ Gilderoy pitied him for his obvious anxiety, but once he saw Gilderoy in action he wouldn’t suffer from these niggling doubts.

Unburdened– since Gilderoy had known where they were headed they had decided to leave their supplies at camp– they made much better time than they had weighed down with all the luggage. Lupin had protested, but Gilderoy had taken his wardrobe and miniaturised study, including signed copies of his three books, on every adventure he’d ever had, and he wasn’t about to find himself in a publicity opportunity without the proper toiletries. Though he had to admit walking was a great deal more pleasant when he wasn’t carrying it all.

The sun had risen to perhaps nine o’clock– Lupin maintained it was only half-seven, but clearly his internal clock was broken– when they reached the blaze Gilderoy had made last night to mark the location of his prey. His symbol– a jolly winking eye not unlike his own baby blues– stilled and disappeared when its maker approached. Gilderoy drew his wand with a flourish, and pointed a stiffly extended arm in mock-duelling fashion toward the edge of a large, murky pond.

‘The beast be there!’ he exclaimed.

‘Be quiet,’ Lupin said, much more softly than he had. He was squinting into the undergrowth, making a thorough survey of the pond and their surroundings. ‘It can’t be here.’

‘Why not?’ Gilderoy demanded– quietly– indignantly. ‘It was certainly here last night.’

Lupin sighed. ‘Do you see those birds?’ He gestured to a nearby tree. ‘They wouldn’t be here if an Occamy was.’

‘Why not?’

Lupin turned to face him. ‘Just how much do you actually know about Occamies?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Occamies feed on birds and rodents. And there’s a burrow two feet behind you. All of which indicates that the predator has moved on.’

‘Maybe it’s hibernating,’ he suggested. ‘Blast it all, Lupin, I’m not interested in where it goes for tea. It’s here! I saw it.’

‘You _really_ saw it?’

‘Now see here, Lupin, I’m an expert on the Dark Arts.’

‘Then you oughtn’t be wasting your time looking for them in the woods of Sweden!’

It might have turned into an argument, but they were interrupted a boiling hiss. Both men turned to the source of the noise– what Gilderoy had taken as a natural hill– just before its still surface exploded outward in a spray of dirt and rocks. Gilderoy felt a hard shove on his chest and went down, his wind knocked out by Lupin’s weight as the other wizard tried to protect him from the attack.

And attack it was. From behind the shelter of Lupin’s arms he saw a spray of fetid-smelling grey liquid shoot over their heads. It sizzled as it struck the tree Gilderoy had blazed the night before. A wild shriek filled the air like the scream of a tornado, blasting his eardrums. All round them the trees shook with the force of the blasting noise, and beneath his body Gilderoy felt the earth rolling as if in an earthquake.

‘See?’ he shouted. ‘I was right!’

‘It’s not an Occamy,’ Lupin yelled back, rolling off him awkwardly. He whipped his wand from his coat and aimed with a steady hand. ‘ _Conjunctivitatus!_ '

Gilderoy sat up in time to see the monster abruptly halt its rapid progress toward them. It was a truly hideous being, nearly nine feet in length, its body pale, corpulent and slimy. Its many tentacles wove through the air uncertainly as it turned its blind head back and forth trying to find them.

‘I suggest we kill it,’ Gilderoy said.

‘I’d be more than happy to,’ Lupin grated. ‘Unfortunately, I can’t move.’

‘What do you mean you can’t move?’ he repeated dumbly. ‘A simple misdirection hex won’t stop it forever!’ He scrambled to his feet to demonstrate his plan of action, but Lupin didn’t follow. ‘Well, come on!’

‘My legs are paralysed!’

Gilderoy looked down. Sure enough, Lupin was sprawled uncomfortably, and his legs were covered in the crawler’s sticky secretion. ‘Bad luck,’ Gilderoy told his guide. ‘But I’m sure you’ll be fine–‘

He didn’t have the chance to tell Lupin to meet him back at camp if he survived. The crawler had indeed shaken off the effects of the Conjunctivitis, and its dozens of clawed feet flung aside spadefuls of dirt as it came toward them again. The hiss was the only warning it gave before it lifted its bulbous head and released a second jet of poisonous fluids. Gilderoy flung himself to the side and rolled, putting his back to a large boulder. Lupin, left exposed beside the pond, threw up a shield with a quick ‘ _Protego!_ ’

Gilderoy took aim at the crawler and did his worst. ‘ _Petrificum Totalus!_ ’ Nothing happened, and he cursed. Latin had never been his strong point. ‘ _Petricarum!_ Petrifici?’

Lupin’s voice rose over his. ‘ _Viscus Expeli!_ ’ A moment later Gilderoy hurried to press his sleeve over his nose, as the crawler’s intestines violently expelled themselves through its fatty midsection. A tortured shriek left the creature’s mouth, and it collapsed to the ground. Thankfully Gilderoy was sure of the spell that would be most useful now, and he cast it with confidence, flicking his wand briskly at the disgusting beast. ‘ _Evanesco,_ ’ he commanded. The crawler vanished, though the smell of rotting flesh and acid taint of fresh entrails remained.

When it was clear that the beast was truly going to stay gone, Gilderoy left his shelter and hurried across the fifteen feet separating him from Lupin, who lay exhausted and pale on the dirt. ‘Well done,’ he told his guide enthusiastically. ‘Quite a warrior of the world, aren’t we? Smashing effort there. Good thing I was here to help, of course, or it might have recovered.’

‘You left it in pain,’ Lupin accused him softly. His eyes were squeezed shut and his hand was clenched into a fist around his wand. He lifted his head a little and let it fall to the loam again. ‘You should have killed it or let it go.’

‘Bit concussed?’ Gilderoy guessed, inclined to be sympathetic. After all, not every wizard could be expected to walk away from such a fright as blase as Gilderoy Lockhart, a warrior wizard if ever there was. He crouched beside his companion, considering the skinny legs which lay like sticks in the leaves. The crawler’s venomous spew had dissolved Lupin’s already threadbare trousers and left great red sores on his thighs and shins. Gilderoy swirled his wand over the wounds, and cast a quick Scourgifying charm. Lupin gasped and groaned– not a terribly grateful sound– as soapy water splashed suddenly over his legs, then disappeared. He propped himself up on his elbows and glared at Gilderoy, who decided to let that one pass.

Lupin pointed his wand at his own legs, and said firmly, ‘ _Episky_.’ He tentatively shifted his legs, and exhaled sharply in relief. ‘Help me up,’ he told Gilderoy. ‘They’re still weak.’

He got his shoulders under Lupin’s arm, and together they managed to get Lupin on his feet, though he leaned heavily on Gilderoy for support. ‘Quite a morning,’ Gilderoy mentioned. ‘Though I imagine the village of Ystad will be just as glad there’s no Occamy after all.’

Lupin sighed. ‘There probably was, actually. A carrion crawler wouldn’t be in a place this isolated unless it had good reason. I suspect the Occamy is already dead.’ He shifted in Gilderoy’s hold, looking about the pond and the trees even more carefully than before. There weren’t, Gilderoy noticed, any birds nearby now.

‘There,’ Lupin murmured, and pointed. It was the wickedly large hole the crawler had created by springing out of the earth at them. It was also the source of the lingering smell. Lupin gestured again, and Gilderoy reluctantly put them into motion, helping the other man to limp toward the blast site. Both wizards kept their wands at the ready, though it was soon very apparent that there was no need.

It was, or had been, the Occamy nest, buried perhaps six feet beneath the half-frozen dirt between the deep and ancient roots of the trees. Stripped bones and shimmering scales lay scattered among the discarded shells of eggs.

‘Lucky it didn’t have a mate,’ Gilderoy said. He shuddered lightly at the thought. Crawlers could produce hundreds of eggs, usually in the very carrion they were eating. Stumbling on an infestation and an enraged female would have been deadly, even if Gilderoy was as quick with a wand as he’d been today. Lupin, paralysed from the beginning, would have been a goner.

Lupin shrugged him off suddenly and fell to his knees next to the pit. ‘Hold onto me,’ he instructed tightly. ‘Hurry.’ Bemused, Gilderoy obeyed, taking a good handful of Lupin’s leather belt as Lupin carefully laid himself out along the edge, stretching down into the nest. Lupin hissed when he touched the eggshells, however, and pulled back as if he’d been burned.

‘The eggs are pure silver,’ he muttered.

‘What’s that?’ Gilderoy demanded loudly. Honestly, Lupin as always going on under his breath.

Instead of answering Lupin shrugged out of his coat and wrapped his hands in it. He wormed over the edge again– Gilderoy just managed to grip his belt again before he went over– and gingerly scooped up a football-sized egg that had miraculously survived the carnage untouched. It gleamed metallic in the woollen folds of Lupin’s ragged outerwear; then it disappeared as Lupin carefully wrapped it.

‘Let’s go,’ he said tersely.

‘I think–‘

‘It will be a long walk back to camp since you’re going to be carrying me.’

That was true. It was also unappealing. Being a hero, Gilderoy surmised unhappily, was not all fun and games. He sighed himself as he helped Lupin back to his feet, and accepted most of his weight. They set off on the path they’d taken not half an hour earlier.

 

**

 

Settled comfortably with his bedroll a plush cushion at his back, the fire toasting the soles of his feet, and a bowl of soup making a pleasant beefy sort of warmth spread in his stomach, Gilderoy watched Lupin carefully unwrap the egg from the confines of his coat. When a bare knuckle errantly brushed the silvery surface, Lupin hissed again. It seemed there was something significant about that, but Gilderoy was content to watch and not think too much about one wizard’s (apparently many) eccentricities. He gazed on incuriously as Lupin dug a small pit for the egg in the dirt, and shoveled ashes from the fire around its slick sides.

‘I think that should keep it warm for a few hours,’ Lupin murmured when he had finished. A small crease of worry had taken up residence on his thin face, and he wore a pursed-lip expression that was not, Gilderoy noted, particularly charming or attractive. Then he seemed to come to a decision.

‘I’ll reduce my fee to fifteen Galleons if you let me have the egg,’ he announced.

‘What do you want it for?’ Gilderoy felt compelled to ask. ‘You’re not going to– eat it, or something, are you?’

Lupin sighed heavily. He did that a lot. Gilderoy wondered if he had asthma and considered offering his services, but Lupin was a proud sort.

‘I’m not going to eat it,’ the other wizard was saying slowly. ‘I have a friend who works with unusual magical creatures. I think he’d enjoy raising this Occamy and releasing it when it’s ready to fend for itself.’

Now that was just silly. ‘My dear sir,’ Gilderoy explained, trying to be patient, ‘I have just finished ridding the world of one monster. You propose to replace it with another?’

‘Ten Galleons and the egg.’

‘I suppose it can’t do that much harm,’ Gilderoy conceded charitably. ‘Very well, if that’s what you truly want.’

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought Lupin rolled his eyes. It must be hard, he thought, to be so naive about the world. It was a good job Gilderoy had picked Lupin up in that bar and not someone inclined to take advantage of such youth and recklessness.

‘I say,’ he thought to add. ‘I imagine my editor will want to track you down when I get round to writing all this up. Accurate contact information and all. Credit where credit is due– you were certainly a wonderful guide, though awfully lucky I was there to save you from that crawler.’

Lupin only looked at him. Then he said, ‘Er, I wouldn’t want you to trouble yourself. I think I prefer to remain unmentioned. Just– leave me out altogether. Please.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ he asked, though he was just as glad. Some people had the worst attitude toward artistic license. Gilderoy liked to think of it as ‘flair,’ but you never could tell who was going to make trouble later.

‘We’ll call it part of the bargain,’ Lupin said, sounding relieved. He stuck out a hand, and Gilderoy shook it heartily. ‘I don’t think we ever need to see each other again, Mr Lockhart.’

Gilderoy laughed brightly. ‘You’re a droll fellow, Lupin, a droll fellow. Good man.’ He sipped his soup, and crossed his ankles, and let himself drift into speculation on titles.


	7. Severus

Lupin extinguished the lamps, and undressed. Severus, seated on the bed, watched him with clinical curiosity; first the robes, shrugged aside and allowed to drape gently over Severus’s ottoman. Then the shoes, toed off and neatly placed just under the lip of the bed skirt. Then the stockings– he could see even in the dim darkness that they were Muggle, brown and black plaid. Then his neck tie, curled tidily and stowed safely in his trouser pockets. The trousers last, folded and lain by the robes. He kept his shirt on, as he always did. Severus, as he always did, felt stung and annoyed by that. It was true their little affairs never lasted long, but Lupin could at least be bothered to discard his cufflinks and undo a few buttons.

He stood to undress himself, and Lupin moved to assume his place on the bed. The brief glimpses Severus had of his thighs and rear were– as always– enough to bring him to half-hardness. As he shed his clothing Lupin situated himself low against the headboard, with one of Severus’s pillows at his back, and his legs comfortably spread, bruised-looking knees at sharp angles to his torso. One of the tails of his shirt sat briefly over his crotch, but he moved it as soon as he noticed.

The bed creaked under Severus’s weight as he knelt, carefully, to avoid being awkward instead. Lupin reached for the minty-smelling lotion they used– Severus could no longer bring himself to enjoy mint tea– and they took three minutes to prepare each other.

It was almost always silent between them until Severus lay draped over Lupin’s chest, straining to hold himself up on arms that ached at the wrists, feeling the raspy hair of Lupin’s calves scratching along his back and flanks. It was silent until then and then Lupin would talk.

‘Good, good,’ he’d start. ‘Good. Go deeper. Good, so good. Go deeper, I want it. Nnn.’

Severus hated it.

Lupin let out a sigh, today, and reached behind him to grip the headboard. But his hold was loose, almost a formality, and with the other he palmed himself, docilely. ‘Good,’ he said again.

Severus duly repeated his own part, hovering perhaps nine inches from Lupin’s face, Lupin’s closed eyes and taut mouth and the little line that always appeared between his wheat-coloured brows. ‘You look like you’re in pain.’

‘No.’ Lupin shook his head, just a little. ‘Keep going. Just a little deeper. Oh– yes. Yes, just like that.’

And in perhaps ten minutes, sometimes twelve, Lupin would gasp, and say, ‘I’m going to come– do that– do that– I’m going to come.’ And he would shudder once, the hurt look of someone punched flitting over his face, and then he would sigh again and be done. Severus hated that Lupin never came hard, because he knew he was doing it right and he’d never had complaints, thank you. Not that Lupin ever complained either. He only sighed, and waited politely for Severus to finish.

Because he knew what to look for and because he was always watching for it, he saw the moment when Lupin was suddenly close. And without planning it, without realising he was going to, he detached a hand from the mattress, and he put it over Lupin’s mouth and pressed. ‘Don’t,’ he grated.

Lupin’s eyes flew open. Like watery whiskey, Severus knew, dilated wide in the dark of Severus’s chilly bedroom. His body clenched around Severus, and his legs gripped tightly.

Good lord, Severus thought. It was the first time in the months they’d been having sex that he thought Lupin might be excited.

Just to experiment, he moved his hand to partially cut off Lupin’s breathing from his nose. The pale eyes went a little larger. He pressed down, and then he felt a hand scrabble over his hip, take a large handful of his cheek and pull, urging him on.

Severus liked ritual. And he liked to know what he was getting into before he tried anything new. He had never been one for kinks, for adventurous bedroom antics. And he was long, long past the age where he needed to inflict pain to get off. This new circumstance he had created with an unconsidered action had elements of all those things he disliked, the unknown, the dirty, the dangerous. All things which, apparently, Lupin craved.

But his hand moved of its own accord. It covered Lupin’s airways entirely. He could feel sweat on Lupin’s chest, and the muscles of arms that came around his shoulders tensed and bunched. Trying to be safe and careful and trying to bring himself to climax went to war with each other when Lupin bucked under him. He felt the hot flush in his groin that told him he nearing the edge. It spread through his thighs, up into his gut; he dug his fingers into Lupin’s jaw when his stomach brushed flat against the slick rod of Lupin’s cock crushed between them, when he was in as far as he could go and he couldn’t hear the sounds of their flesh slapping anymore. Lupin came. Hard.

Severus’s elbow went out from under him when he felt the spurt of hot and wet on his chest. It triggered him. He hated the mindlessness of orgasm, was distinctly glad he would never know what he looked like during it, hated the feeling of having all the air sucked out of him and his limbs twitching out of his control. It was disturbingly like the Cruciatus curse, with an only slightly happier ending. He hated that he wanted it and he hated that he consented to something as degrading as copulation to get it.

And damn if it wasn’t better than it had been since he was sixteen and first discovering what his body could do. He lay flummoxed and breathless on Lupin’s chest with a slippery collarbone under his cheek, and Lupin’s fingers drifting up and down his spine.

When he could trust his voice to be steady and unemotional, he said, ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me you liked asphyxiation?’

Lupin’s voice was a little gravelly, and Severus was tired enough, contented enough, to enjoy it more than he wanted to. ‘Forgot, I guess,’ Lupin answered.

That got rid of the enjoyment. Severus picked himself up enough to fall onto the mattress next to Lupin instead of on top of him, kicking an errant knee of his way and wiping sweat from his neck and forehead.

‘You could die,’ he said. ‘Anoxaemia. You should put your god-damn feet up.’

‘I’m fine. I didn’t lose consciousness.’ He’d thought he’d prevented it, but Severus heard Lupin sigh, after all, and gritted his teeth through the sound of it. ‘You were careful.’

‘Of course I bloody was.’

Lupin straightened his shirt, and sat up, rolling his shoulders back, then his head. ‘You don’t have to do it again.’

‘Brain damage,’ Severus said. The fuzz of post-orgasm was leaving him and the implications were detestably clear. ‘Though you’d have to be brain-damaged to want that again. Tell me you never apply carotid pressure.’

‘It has been a considerable amount of time since anyone has felt the need to shut me up during sex.’ Lupin swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood. They were back to the ritual, and Severus did not want to further interrupt it with talking, especially since they didn’t appear to be getting anywhere. He made himself be silent as Lupin dressed, watching until the pale globes of Lupin’s ass disappeared under his drawers. Then he stirred himself to clean up, and left the bed.

As he buttoned his trousers, Lupin asked, ‘Why are we fucking, Severus?’

He paused with his shirt on one arm. ‘Because I like to imagine the look on Black’s face,’ he said honestly.

Lupin opened Severus’s wardrobe– an Oriental mahogany of which he was particularly fond– to watch himself in the inside mirror as he knotted his tie. ‘I never slept with Sirius.’

‘Then, contrary to all expectations, you have taste after all.’ Severus attended to the six ivory buttons on each sleeve, and shook out his waistcoat briskly, liking the crisp snaps the wool made in the air. ‘But that isn’t what I meant.’

‘I see.’

He didn’t particularly think that Lupin did, but he would not be bothered to enlighten the man. His day had been plenty interrupted and he was already feeling an unpleasant grump settling in. He much preferred it when he could return to his afternoon classes without sparing a single thought to his lunch-hour activities. He much preferred it when Lupin didn’t disrupt his comfortable plans, didn’t fuss with the finely tuned instrumentation of Severus’s daily life. Fitting him in four months ago had been simple, almost seamless. Removing him would be much more difficult, but if this post-coital chattiness went on much longer Severus would have to consider it. It was just intolerable.

He said, ‘That hair of yours would better suit a yak than a respected member of the teaching staff.’

‘You weren’t complaining fifteen minutes ago.’ But Lupin did open the wardrobe again, and combed it down with his fingers where it had rucked up. Looking at him, Severus wondered if by supper there would be dark smudges on his cheeks, where Severus had applied so much pressure suffocating him. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted there to be, or not. And he didn’t like uncertainty, either.

He was going to have to break this off and accept the damage to his schedule. It was too much for a reasonable person to be expected to suffer.

‘I’ll set the tea on, shall I?’ Lupin murmured, and left the bedroom. Like always. This, at least, was normal, and Severus was somewhat mollified. At twelve they met in the third-storey corridor outside the History of Magic classroom, a mutually agreed-upon half-way point between their respective offices. They retreated to Severus’s bedroom. They had sex. Lupin made tea in Severus’s small sitting room, and then they both went on their separate ways. It was predictable, it was normal, and it was mostly satisfying. Severus had come to see it as his due. Lunch-time sex followed by a fine black assam. If he broke it off with Lupin he would have to accept the loss of both, because, really, he couldn’t have the tea if he didn’t have sex before it. He might not be able to take the hour in his suite even. If he wasn’t going to use the bedroom then why make the trip at all?

It was really too much to contemplate. Consequently, it was all he could think about. The day was quite spoiled.

He took extra care with his appearance, not that it helped any, and followed Lupin into his sitting room when he was good and ready. Lupin was just pouring the milk into their cups. As Severus sat in his favourite chair, Lupin moved the cup to the small lowboy between them, and poured the tea. Severus watched the milk billow up through the rich brown water and settle into a pale beige cloud spreading out toward the edges of the fine porcelain. They were not his silver-edged set, of course, though he liked that set better; Lupin made the tea and so Lupin chose the settings.

Lupin had stoked the fire in the nearby hearth, as well. The room was comfortably warm, the tapestried walls close and comforting. The thick Persian rug beneath his heels happily muffling all sound. The glow from the lamp golden and muted. The smell of the tea mixing with the genteel bouquet of spices and cinnamon emanating from the tasteful arrangement left by nameless house-elves on the glazed bureau book-case.

Lupin sitting there in his second-favourite double-delegation armchair, his ankles crossed, his tea held to his lips, one hand resting languidly over his stomach.

He wondered who had first tried to smother Lupin during sex– wondered if Lupin had discovered it on it his own.

He said, ‘If Black ever does show up here, this will all be over. If you try to help him I will turn you in myself.’ He meant every word. And hoped very hard that Lupin had the inborn sense to avoid even the appearance of controversy, so they could both continue on without any of the nonsense of having to– rearrange anything.

Lupin’s mouth curved into a smile that might have suited a saint, had Severus known any to compare it with. He replied, ‘Of course,’ almost lightly, mostly amused, and just a little soberly.

Well. Severus couldn’t face the idea of changing his routine, not today. It was too horrifying. He could feel a headache threatening at the mere thought. He sipped his tea, and resigned himself to tackling the problem another day. Perhaps another week. It really was too troubling.

He suspected Lupin of mocking him with his eyes, and primly decided not to notice.


	8. Bill

‘Sirius has been dead for fifteen years,’ Remus interrupted.

Bill was caught with his mouth open and his mind blank. ‘What?’ he managed finally.

Remus finished slicing the apple, and swept the discard into the rubbish. ‘I can’t miss what I never had back. And you’re thinking that makes me a cruel man, and a bad one, and you’re probably right. But I did my mourning a long time ago, and I haven’t got enough in me to start again now. Save your condolences for Harry. He loved the Sirius you knew. I couldn’t.’

 

**

 

Bill held him from behind, his hand resting on Remus’s bare ribs, investigating the spaces between the bones. He dropped his forehead to Remus’s shoulder blade, and said, ‘Did you ever have an affair with an older man?’

‘Mm,’ Remus said. He covered Bill’s hand with his own, and buried a yawn in their pillow. ‘I seem to be working in the opposite direction.’

Bill squeezed his fingers, shifted a bit more to be comfortable. Midnight was settling into a hazy laziness about them, and if the room was just slightly too warm, it was really too much trouble to rise and open a window.

‘Who was he?’ Bill asked at last.

There was a little hesitation, just a tiny pause, but Remus never deliberately went about being obscure– he just was. ‘Another teacher,’ Remus said finally. ‘You know I taught at Beauxbatons for a while? Just another teacher.’

They were silent for a while longer, long enough that Bill began to contemplate sleeping. The silences were getting harder to break, and Remus felt good against him. He dredged for the presence of mind to whisper, ‘What did it feel like, when you were with him? Why were you with him.’

Remus tugged Bill’s hand down over his belly, pressing their arms together. A little too warm, but he kicked the sheet down to compensate, and the balance was just right.

‘He made me feel easy,’ Remus murmured. ‘He was just– calmer. He knew what he wanted, and he helped me put a few things into perspective. I never felt– urgent, or ashamed, around him. He never made me feel too young to be my own person. But maybe he was just special.’

He didn’t ask if he made Bill feel that way. Bill hadn’t expected him to, because Remus never seemed to expect anything of anyone, even when he had every right to.

‘I’m trying to avoid the thought that it has something to do with my dad,’ Bill said finally.

Remus laughed aloud at that, the sound husky and throaty in a way that made Bill shiver a bit with liking it. ‘A bit late to fix it if it does.’

 

**

 

Harry poked his rice pudding with his spoon as if he were suspicious of the contents. ‘It’s tinned,’ Bill felt compelled to tell him. ‘Won’t bite you.’

Harry ate a conservative amount obediently, but he set it aside not long after, and turned his attention back to the tapestry, reaching out his hand to trace the threads. ‘Did you know Regulus Black?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Me?’ Bill stretched his legs out fully on the couch, and turned his book a little more toward the lamp to catch the light. ‘No. He died a long time ago.’

‘He was a Death Eater, wasn’t he.’

‘It’s thought so. No proof, though.’

‘Sirius said he was murdered by Voldemort.’

He couldn’t read and talk at the same time, so he marked his spot with a finger and closed the book. ‘Are you interested in Regulus?’

‘Only a little, I guess,’ Harry replied. He looked back at Bill. ‘Do you remember much what it was like? The first time.’

Bill didn’t need him to clarify which time he meant. It seemed, though, just– not right, that Harry should be sixteen years old and in his entire young life there were only two times that mattered.

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘I was younger than you are now. Barely in Hogwarts, actually. I remember worrying about Dad, because Mum was always worried.’ He hadn’t thought about it in years, but Harry’s thoughtful gaze was taking him back. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. ‘I remember a night when I couldn’t sleep, and when I went downstairs, I found her crying. I was too scared to go sit with her.’ He twisted his mouth, and sighed. ‘I wish I had. Funny how you regret the little things.’

But Harry was only sixteen, and from his expression, Bill surmised that Harry didn’t give a fig for Bill’s minor regrets. Bill gave up talking.

Harry poked at the little burnt hole that had been Sirius’s name. ‘The whole ‘Boy Who Lived’ thing. It always seems to mean more to adults. Like they either want to feed me, or shove me away down a hole somewhere so I never get hurt again.’

‘You saved their world. They’re grateful. But they also have more understanding of what got lost, while you were doing it. And what else you could lose now.’ It sounded wise enough in his head, but once it was out of his mouth, he realised how insensitive it was. No way to take it back, though. Harry poked harder at the tapestry, worming his pointer into the hole and widening it. His brows made a dark slashing frown across his forehead.

‘Did you ever run away?’ Harry asked him, almost four whole minutes later.

There was no possible way to un-fuck the conversation, and Bill didn’t bother trying. ‘Yeah,’ he answered truthfully. ‘Ran all the way to the furthest place from England I could think of. But you do come home eventually.’

Harry muttered something. It sounded like, ‘If you have one.’

‘Yeah,’ Bill repeated, and Harry didn’t ask any more questions, after that.

 

**

Bill stood in the doorway, well, in the hall really, because Sirius was Remus’s self-made responsibility, not his, and hell if he could do anything about changing the man’s mind when it was made. He stood in the hall and tried to look as if he were just passing the time of day counting the woodcarver’s marks in the mediaeval oak wall, sneaking little glances into the room through the door and wishing he could see more even as he wished there were nothing at all to see.

It had been the master's suite, which meant it took up half the bloody floor, not just the closet-sized corner like Remus’s on the fourth storey. Bill had helped clean it out himself, before he’d known Sirius was going to stash a hippogriff in it. The huge beast was in there, moulting everywhere and digging new scratches into the floorboards. He had a perfect view of the old canopy four-poster, which was not as accidental as it ought to have been if he was going to convince himself he wasn’t spying. Sirius lay sprawled across the unmade, sagging mattress, his hairy calves poking out of sleeping pants that were too short for him. Sirius didn’t stir til Remus moved past the doorjamb and entered the room.

‘All right?’ Remus asked him softly.

Bill could see the impulse to make a sarcastic comment. Sirius was no good at hiding any of his thoughts, not like Remus. Bill wondered if they’d ever been more alike, and it was just circumstances that had made them the men they were now. If Sirius had said something rude, Remus would have endured it silently, because that was what Remus did, let people get in their cuts, as if he were a man made of stone who didn’t feel it. And would have repeated the question after without letting any sign of impatience show.

But maybe Sirius was growing up, after all, or the permission hadn’t been there in Remus’s face, this time. Or maybe time had simply stolen all the fight. Sirius just nodded, and looked away. Bill found his throat went unexpectedly tight at that.

Remus moved with a sudden crispness. The floor creaked mightily as he crossed it briskly, and Buckbeak squawked at the intrusion, but Remus ignored the beast, and it went back to ripping out feathers with its razor beak. Remus went straight to the cupboard, and as soon as he chose a drawer, Bill knew what he was doing. Molly Weasley was nothing if not a good housekeeper, and she put the linens in exactly the same spot in every room– the top right-hand drawer. Remus brought them to Sirius’s bed, and shook out a thin summer sheet, and let it fall gentle as a summer breeze over Sirius’s bare legs. He tucked the sheet under the corners of the mattress, and then he moved to the upper shelves of the wardrobe for a limp feather duvet and a faded counterpane. All the while Sirius watched him with something dark and roiling and bemused and hurt in his eyes, and Remus avoided meeting them as he spread the duvet over the sheet, and then the quilt.

Bill looked away when Remus touched Sirius’s cheek, but he heard the comment all the same, delivered quietly enough, and evenly.

‘Shave before you come down to supper,’ Remus said.

Then Remus came out into the hallway, and shut the door behind him, and Bill followed him up the stairs to their room.

 

**

 

Bill found Remus in the library, standing in front of the tapestry with his arms crossed over his chest. He was tapping his chin with his wand.

‘Got the safety on that thing?’ Bill joked, stepping through piles of books on the floor, several of them open, to join the older man.

Remus smiled absently and didn’t answer. Bill didn’t push him, and merely looked at the tapestry himself. The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black had taken a beating. The tapestry was nearly as threadbare as Remus’s favourite shirt, worn out at the elbows and with a back hem that was beyond salvage. Bill wasn’t given to extensively metaphorical thoughts, but that one struck him as deceptive, anyway. Remus loved his shirt. He doubted most Blacks had ever loved each other.

Bill reached out, and poked at the hole where Sirius’s name ought to have been. He looked next to it, and said, ‘Harry asked me about Regulus, a while back.’

‘Regulus?’ Remus glanced at him finally. Bill watched thoughts fly behind Remus’s amber eyes. ‘I suppose it was inevitable,’ he added a moment later. ‘It’s not as though his own family are as tangible as the Blacks.’

Sad, that, and a little discouraging, to think that all you were in life could be wiped away by one madman with a wand. Bill had met the Potters once, had even held Harry as a newborn– carefully supervised by his own Mum and a roomful of anxious adults, of course. Now all that was left of them were scattered memories that could never be collected all together, and wouldn’t say much, anyway.

‘You knew Regulus, didn’t you?’ Bill murmured.

‘I liked him,’ Remus admitted. ‘He wasn’t a thing like Sirius, really. Though they looked like twins.’ He brushed his lower lip with his wand, and Bill repressed the automatic leap of his sex drive at that little gesture. ‘God, did they look alike.’

Bill traced the intricate brocade that lined the edges of the tapestry. ‘I did a little reading, in case Harry ever asked again. I didn’t know that you were with him when he died. Regulus.’

A hand rose and fell in the corner of his vision. Remus was the only Englishman he knew who shrugged like a Gaul. ‘It’s not something I liked to talk about,’ Remus said.

‘Where’s he buried, then?’ Bill asked. He looked, and saw Remus looking back at him. There were the thoughts again, clear as day, once you knew what you were looking for. ‘He’s not in the Black mausoleum,’ Bill added. ‘It’s just a memorial stone.’

Remus slipped his wand into his belt, and turned away from the tapestry to look at Bill. ‘I took him to France,’ he said abruptly. ‘I pretended he was already dead and I sneaked him out of the country. In the end it didn’t matter much. They’d tortured him. And I think he gave up. I couldn’t... convince him... He was very alone. I thought I was doing something good and it didn't change anything at all. Story of my life. It's all for nothing.’

'Remus.' If not for the monotony of the tone he would have been alarmed. There was only weariness in Remus' face, in that decade-old crime and confession, and weariness was not enough to worry over, but it put a tiny prick of fear in his gut and it took him a moment to remember how to breathe. He couldn’t stop his eyes from seeking out the last burn-mark on the tapestry, but maybe that was just the least of it.

He reached, and grasped Remus’s hand. Then he tugged, and Remus came willingly, letting Bill hold him, the way he did sometimes. Bill tucked his chin over Remus’s shoulder and wrapped an arm about him, and they stood like that for a while, minutes ticking by, and Bill decided not to think about the likelihood of having to let go eventually.

 

**

 

Dumbledore said a few kind words at Sirius’s funeral, and to Bill’s surprise so did his own dad, and then Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Tonks of course, she was his cousin. The only one he’d thought might have something to say who didn’t was Remus, but Remus was private like that. If he’d cried at all, Bill hadn’t seen it. Remus didn’t cry, though.

Apparently Harry Potter didn’t, either. He stood there blank-faced through all of it, and he went back outside for the Portkey as soon as the eulogies were done. Ginny went after him, and Bill approved of that. Another brother in the family never hurt anyone.

Turned out Sirius had commissioned himself a plaque in the ‘80s, morbid as it was. It was a little lacklustre now, but Tonks had got it polished up, and Dumbledore placed it on the wall with all the other Black family memorials, right next to the last one, Sirius’s younger brother. An entire family, gone now, Bill thought, staring at it.

Remus dropped a hand onto Bill’s shoulder and murmured in his ear, ‘I’m Apparating back. Coming?’

No-one was looking, except Snape, and his eyes seemed riveted to the hand on Bill’s shoulder. ‘Yeah,’ Bill said, and didn’t do as he wanted to and put his hand in Remus’s, because some things he couldn’t quite bring himself to do with an audience.

 

**

 

Bill finished rinsing their tea things, and moved the warm pot to the back burner. ‘You know what?’ he said.

Remus flipped past _The Daily Prophet_ ’s Sports section. Sirius took the last biscuit from the tin, and turned it upside down to shake the crumbs into his palm. ‘What do I know?’ Sirius asked, funnelling them into his mouth.

He turned one of the kitchen chairs backwards and straddled it, pretending he didn’t notice the way Remus’s eyes skipped down to his thighs when he did that. ‘I think maybe you two had a thing.’

Remus went back to his paper, a little too obviously. ‘You couldn’t be more absurd if you tried.’

Sirius was wide-eyed. ‘You saying I look a poof?’

‘Am I wrong?’ Bill challenged.

‘Very,’ Sirius told him, his cheek full of biscuit. ‘But thanks. My machismo needed bolstering.’

‘Your machismo is a towering bastion,’ Remus said, and flipped another page.

‘Remus was the adventurous one,’ Sirius confided, running a finger around the inside of the tin, just in case. ‘The places we used to drag him out of. The drag he wore to those places. I blame the drugs.’

It was a little disconcerting that he couldn’t tell if they were really teasing. In any case, Sirius had dispensed with all the food, and he didn’t stay to continue the banter. He clapped Bill on the shoulder before he left, and kicked Remus’s chair on the way by. On the whole, the kitchen was quieter with him gone.

‘We didn’t,’ Remus said abruptly.

Bill looked back at him. ‘All right,’ he accepted.

Remus seemed dissatisfied with whatever he was reading– business section, Bill thought– and closed the paper and pushed it aside. He put his chin on his fist and gazed at Bill with that look he got occasionally, the one that made Bill feel liked and appreciated. It was a very good look.

‘We didn’t,’ he repeated, more gently now. He put out his free hand, and Bill took it, tracing his lifeline. It didn’t cross his palm, and Bill told himself once again that Divination was a crock of shit, anyway. ‘All right, then?’

Bill smiled for him, because he seemed to want it, and threaded their fingers together. ‘How long did you live in France?’

‘Two years in Lons le Saunier, and four in Vaucluse.’

‘Did you like it there?’

Remus rubbed the length of Bill’s thumb. ‘It was good to have somewhere to run to,’ he said after a moment. ‘Being here was... too hard for a while.’

‘Do you ever think about where you'll go after all this?’

Remus raised Bill’s hand to his lips. ‘Not right now,’ was all he answered.


End file.
